Agoston Haraszthy

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Agoston Haraszthy (August 30, 1812, Pest, Hungary - July 6, 1869, Corinto, Nicaragua) was a Hungarian-American traveler, writer, town-builder, and pioneer winemaker in Wisconsin and California, often referred to as the "Father of California Viticulture," or the "Father of Modern Winemaking in California." One of the first men to plant vineyards in Wisconsin, he was the founder of the Buena Vista vineyards (now Buena Vista Carneros) in Sonoma, California, and an early and important writer on California wine and viticulture.

Contents 1 Birth 2 Life before America 3 To America 4 Travels in North America 4.1 Life in Wisconsin 4.2 Life in California 5 Nobility 6 The Zinfandel Controversy 7 Vintners Hall of Fame 8 References 9 Works Consulted

[edit] Birth

Haraszthy was born on August 30, 1812, in Pest, Hungary (since 1873 a part of Budapest), the only child of Károly (Charles) Haraszthy and his wife, Anna Maria Fischer. The oft-repeated claim that Haraszthy was born in Futak (Futog), Hungary (now part of Serbia), has been disproved: the records of his birth and baptism are preserved today in the Roman Catholic Church of Terézváros in Budapest, where Haraszthy’s biographer, Brian McGinty, examined them in 1995.

[edit] Life before America

Both Agoston and Charles Haraszthy owned estates in a part of southern Hungary called the Bácska, now a part of Serbia. Agoston's father-in-law was Ferenc Dedinszky, the superintendent of a large estate at Futak on the Danube River where, among other things, vines were cultivated and wine was produced. Both of the Haraszthys were in the wine business in and around Futak.

On January 6, 1833, Agoston Haraszthy married Eleonora Dedinszky in Bács County, Hungary. The Dedinszkys were of Polish descent, though they had lived in Hungary for centuries and long been accepted into the Hungarian nobility. Agoston and Eleonora Haraszthy were the parents of four boys and two girls.

[edit] To America

Traveling with a cousin named Károly Fischer, Haraszthy left Hungary for the United States in March 1840. Moving through Austria, Germany, and England, Haraszthy and his cousin crossed the Atlantic to New York, then proceeded by way of the Hudson River, the Erie Canal, and the Great Lakes to Wisconsin, where they eventually settled. In later years, Haraszthy claimed that he was forced to leave Hungary because his liberal political activities had drawn the wrath of the Habsburgs, who ruled Hungary with a tyrannical hand. In the best-selling book he wrote about his American adventures, however, he made it clear that he came to America in search of economic opportunity. The commercial life of Hungary was stultified by a rigid imperial government, which granted monopolies to a privileged few and denied economic opportunity to others. In Haraszthy’s own words, he came to America “for one reason only–namely, to see this blessed country for myself.”

[edit] Travels in North America

Haraszthy was a writer in his native Hungarian, in German (which he spoke from birth), and later in English. When he returned to Hungary in 1842, he made arrangements to write a Hungarian language book about the United States. He traveled widely through the United States to gather material for the book, which praised American life and enterprise. The two-volume book was published at Pest in 1844 under the title of Utazas Éjszakamerikában (Travels in North America). A second edition was published in 1850. This was the second book about the United States to be published in Hungarian.

[edit] Life in Wisconsin

In Wisconsin, Haraszthy and his cousin attempted to settle on some land at Lake Koshkonong. This effort was unsuccessful, however, so they went on to the Sauk Prairie, on the Wisconsin River west of Madison. There Haraszthy purchased a large tract of property facing the river and laid out a town. First called Széptaj (Hungarian for "beautiful place"), later Haraszthy (or Haraszthyville or Haraszthopolis), the town was renamed Westfield and finally Sauk City after Haraszthy left for California in 1849. Haraszthy is still remembered in Sauk City as the town’s founder. In 1842, Haraszthy returned to Hungary to bring his parents, wife and children to Wisconsin as permanent American residents. The Haraszthys became United States citizens and never again returned to Hungary. In Wisconsin, Haraszthy formed a partnership with an Englishman named Robert Bryant and threw himself into a myriad of ambitious projects. Besides the town that he laid out, he built mills, raised corn and other grains, and kept sheep, pigs, and horses. He opened a brickyard, kept a store, operated a ferry across the Wisconsin River, and obtained the approval of the Wisconsin legislature to build a bridge across the Wisconsin River. Many of the oldest houses still standing in Sauk City were built with bricks from Haraszthy’s brickyard, although the bridge was not built, for before he could get the project under way he left Wisconsin for California. In Wisconsin, Haraszthy was a legendary hunter, noted among the residents for once having killed a wolf with his bare hands. Haraszthy donated land on which the first Roman Catholic church and school in Sauk City were built. He owned and operated a steamboat, which carried passengers and freight on the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers. He also planted grapes and dug wine cellars into hillside slopes above the town. The cellars and slopes are today home to the Wollersheim Winery, one of Wisconsin’s best-known wine producers.

[edit] Life in California

Like many others, Haraszthy was excited by news of the discovery of gold in California in 1848, and by the end of that year he completed plans to leave Wisconsin. Early in 1849, he was elected captain of a train of wagons destined for California via the Santa Fe Trail. Although most California-bound travelers were lured westward by dreams of gold, Haraszthy said that he was going to California “to settle, not for the gold,” and that he intended to plant a vineyard near San Diego. Traveling with his entire family, he left Wisconsin in March 1849 and arrived in San Diego the following December.

In San Diego, as in Wisconsin, Haraszthy plunged into a frenzy of activity. He formed a partnership with Juan Bandini, a prominent Spanish-Californian, and launched a host of business and agricultural projects. He planted fruit orchards, operated a livery stable and stagecoach line, opened a butcher shop, and organized a syndicate to subdivide a large section of the San Diego Bay shore into streets, parks, and building lots. The land lay between Old Town and New San Diego and was called Middle San Diego, or Middletown. It was informally known in San Diego as “Haraszthyville.” While in San Diego, Haraszthy imported grape vines by mail. Some came from the eastern United States, others from Europe. He also planted a vineyard on a tract of land near the San Diego River. On April 1, 1850, in the first election held under the new American administration of California, Haraszthy was elected sheriff of San Diego County. He also served as city marshal. In his capacity as a private contractor, he built a jail for the city of San Diego, which was completed in 1851.

Haraszthy was elected as California State Assemblyman from San Diego in September 1851. He served from January 5 to May 4, 1852, advancing proposals to relieve flooding on the San Diego River, build a state hospital in San Diego, ease tax burdens on Southern California landowners, replace the debt-ridden San Diego city council with a board of trustees, and provide relief for the indigent in San Diego. He also led an unsuccessful movement to divide California into two states.

While attending the legislature, Haraszthy began to buy real estate near Mission San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores) in San Francisco. His first purchase there was made on March 25, 1852. He tried to raise grapes in San Francisco but found the climate too foggy. He acquired a large tract of land near Crystal Springs on the San Francisco Peninsula (now part of San Mateo County) and planted it to vineyards, but eventually gave up the effort to make wine there, again finding the climate too foggy to ripen the grapes. In both San Francisco and Crystal Springs, Haraszthy continued to import a wide variety of European grape vines and experimented with their planting and cultivation.

In San Francisco, Haraszthy became friendly with a group of Hungarian metallurgists. He formed a partnership under the name of Haraszthy and Uznay and built a large private refinery facility, called the Eureka Gold and Silver Refinery. When a branch of the United States Mint opened in San Francisco in April 1854, Haraszthy became the first U.S. assayer. In August 1855, he became melter and refiner at the Mint. A grand jury investigation of alleged defalcations of gold from the Mint led in September, 1857, to a federal indictment charging Haraszthy with the embezzlement of $151,550 in gold. A long investigation led to the dismissal of the criminal charges. A civil trial then followed, which fully exonerated Haraszthy in February 1861.

While the mint investigation was pending, Haraszthy moved to Sonoma, about fifty miles north of San Francisco. In 1856, he bought a small vineyard northeast of the town and renamed it Buena Vista. He moved his vines there from Crystal Springs and began to expand the vineyards. In 1857, he began to bore tunnels into the sides of a nearby mountain and build stone cellars at their entrance. He eventually had two large stone winery buildings, equipped with underground tunnels and the latest wine-making equipment in California. Haraszthy’s cellars at Buena Vista were the first stone wineries in the state. He added acreage to his original purchase, eventually holding more than 5,000 acres (20 km²) of valley and hillside. He was a proponent of hillside plantings, arguing that vines should be permitted to grow without irrigation. He divided some of his acreage into smaller plots, inducing prominent Californians to come to Sonoma, where he planted vineyards for them. He was a vocal advocate of Chinese immigration, arguing that Chinese should be permitted to come to California and provide much-needed labor. He built a Pompeiian-style villa in the middle of the Buena Vista vineyards, in which he lived with his family.

In 1858, Haraszthy wrote a 19-page “Report on Grapes and Wine of California,” which was published by the California State Agricultural Society. With practical advice for planting vines and making wines, it encouraged the planting of grapes throughout the state. In later years, Haraszthy’s “Report” was recognized as the first treatise on winemaking written and published in California, and praised as the “first American explication of traditional European winemaking practices.”

Haraszthy had by this time achieved recognition as California’s leading winemaker. He contributed articles to newspapers and made speeches to gatherings of agriculturalists. He entered his wines in the competition of the California State Fair and received the highest awards. On April 23, 1862, he was elected president of the California State Agricultural Society.

In 1863, Haraszthy incorporated the Buena Vista Vinicultural Society, the first large corporation in California (perhaps in the United States) organized for the express purpose of engaging in agriculture. With the support of prominent investors, he greatly expanded his vineyards in Sonoma, making wine which was sold as far away as New York. In 1864, an article in Harper’s Magazine proclaimed that Buena Vista was “the largest establishment of the kind in the world.

In 1861, Haraszthy was appointed by California Governor John G. Downey as a commissioner to report to the Legislature on the “ways and means best adapted to promote the improvement and growth of the grape-vine in California.” He decided to make a trip to Europe to investigate the best European vine-planting and winemaking practices and to gather cuttings of European vines. He traveled through France, Germany, Switzerland, and Spain before returning to California in December 1861 with more than 100,000 cuttings of more than 350 different varieties of vines. He offered to sell the vines to the state, propagate them in his Sonoma nursery, test them to determine which were best suited to the California soil and climate, and distribute them to would-be winemakers throughout California. The Legislature refused the offer, leaving Haraszthy to distribute the vines at his own expense. It was a financial setback, for Haraszthy had expended large sums of money in gathering the vines and bringing them back to California.

In Sonoma, Haraszthy became friendly with Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, the former comandante general of Mexican California, founder of Sonoma, and a neighboring landowner. Vallejo himself was a well-respected winemaker. On June 1, 1863, the Haraszthy and Vallejo families were united in a double wedding, with two of the Haraszthy sons marrying two of the Vallejo daughters. In that wedding, Natalia Vallejo became Mrs. Attila Haraszthy, and Jovita Vallejo became Mrs. Arpad Haraszthy.

Haraszthy’s management of the Buena Vista Vinicultural Society was both visionary and reckless. He borrowed large sums of money to expand the vineyards and cellars. He employed layering as a planting technique. This resulted in quicker propagation of vines but also exposed the plants to soil diseases. By the middle of the 1860s, the vines at Buena Vista were growing brown and weak. Haraszthy’s critics believed this was due to his layering. In fact, it was the result of the first infestation of the phylloxera ever known in California. Almost unknown before it made its appearance in Sonoma, the phylloxera spread in subsequent years throughout the California vineyards and even crossed the Atlantic to France, where it caused devastation. With production lagging, profits from Buena Vista wine were inadequate to pay the Society’s debt. Shareholders forced Haraszthy out of the Vinicultural Society in 1867 and replaced him with another manager, who tore out all of his layered vines. Haraszthy left Buena Vista for another vineyard in Sonoma owned by his wife. While living there, he filed bankruptcy.

In 1868, Haraszthy left California for Nicaragua. He formed a partnership with a German-born physician and surgeon named Theodore Wassmer and began to develop a large sugar plantation near the seaside port of Corinto. He planned to make rum from the sugar and sell it in American markets. On July 6, 1869, he disappeared in a river on his Nicaraguan property. Whether he fell into the river and was thereafter washed out to sea, or was dragged under the water by alligators which infested the area, was never finally established. His body was never found.

[edit] Nobility

The Haraszthys were a noble Hungarian family who traced their roots to Ung county in northeastern Hungary, now a part of Slovakia. Agoston Haraszthy belonged to the Mokcsai branch of the Haraszthy family, signifying that at one time or another his ancestors owned estates at places called Mokcsa and Haraszth. In Hungary, he was formally known as Mokcsai Haraszthy Ágoston. (In Hungary, family names are written first and given names last. See Hungarian name.) The name has sometimes been written as Agoston Haraszthy de Mokcsa, but this is an erroneous attempt to render the Hungarian surname of Mokcsai in the French style. It was never used by Haraszthy himself and is totally foreign to Hungarian names, either in their original form or as used in English-speaking countries. In the United States, Haraszthy was known as Agoston Haraszthy, or simply A. Haraszthy.

The correct pronunciation of his name in Hungarian is Aa-go-shtone Hoar-o-stee. In the United States, the name is anglicized as August-un Harris-tee. Haraszthy’s descendants living in California today spell their surname in Hungarian fashion as Haraszthy and pronounce it as Harris-tee.

When Haraszthy lived in Wisconsin in the 1840s, he was referred to as “Count” Haraszthy by the local settlers, mostly German-speaking immigrants. He was not a count, however, and he was never addressed by that title in Hungary, California, or Nicaragua. In California, he was addressed as “Colonel” Haraszthy, an honorary designation commonly given to distinguished “gentlemen” and vaguely derived from his military service in Hungary. Despite his lack of a formal title, Haraszthy’s noble ancestry is uncontroversial.

[edit] The Zinfandel Controversy

The oft-repeated claim that Haraszthy brought the first Zinfandel vines to California is a subject of controversy. In the 1870s and 1880's, Haraszthy’s son Arpad Haraszthy stated that his father brought the first Zinfandels to California in the early 1850s, possibly as early as 1852. Arpad was then a well-known champagne producer in San Francisco and President of the California State Board of Viticultural Commissioners, and his statement was widely accepted. ^[1] A century later, however, California wine historian Charles L. Sullivan began to challenge Arpad’s statement. ^[2] In 2003, Sullivan published a book in which he showed that other men brought the Zinfandel to the East Coast of the United States as early as the 1820s and to California at unspecified dates in the 1850s. Although Sullivan praised Agoston Haraszthy as a “truly important figure in the history of the American West” and “an important force in the history of California winegrowing,” he argues that there is no credible evidence that Haraszthy brought the Zinfandel to California and that Arpad Haraszthy’s claim about it was a “myth.”^[3] In his biography of Haraszthy, however, McGinty presents evidence that Haraszthy may well have obtained Zinfandel vines as early as 1852 with the help of Lázár Mészáros, former Hungarian Minister of War and an avid horticulturalist who was then operating a nursery in New Jersey. This evidence would tend to corroborate Arpad Haraszthy’s recollections. Sullivan does not discuss it in his book, thus leaving the issue in controversy. ^[4]

[edit] Vintners Hall of Fame

March 2007, Haraszthy was inducted into the Vintners Hall of Fame by the Culinary Institute of America. Seventy wine journalists cast ballots, honoring Haraszthy for his contributions to the early development of the wine industry in California. The award was accepted in Haraszthy's behalf by his great-great grandson, Vallejo Haraszthy.^[5]

[edit] References

[edit] Works Consulted

McGinty, Brian. Haraszthy at the Mint. Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1975.
McGinty, Brian. Strong Wine: The Life and Legend of Agoston Haraszthy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.
Thomas Pinney, A History of Wine in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hugh Johnson, Vintage: The Story of Wine. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.
James A. Beard, “Shopping for California Wines,” House and Garden, August 1956.
Charles Feleky, “Agoston Haraszthy de Mokcsa,” Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. 4 , ed. Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1931, 236-237.
Marriage Register, Parish of Futtak, January 6, 1833.
Mokcsai Haraszthy Ágoston, Utazas Éjszakamerikában. Pest [Hungary]: Heckenast Gusztáv, 1844. 2 vols.
Agoston Haraszthy, “Report on Grapes and Wine of California.” In Transactions of the California State Agricultural Society During the Year 1858. Sacramento: John O’Meara, State Printer, 1859, pp. 311-329.
David Darlington, Angel’s Visits. New York, Henry Holt, 1991.
”Wine-Making in California,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 29 (1864).
Agoston Haraszthy, Grape Culture, Wines, and Wine-Making, with Notes Upon Agriculture and Horticulture. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1862.
Register of Marriages, St. Francis Solano Church, Sonoma, California.
Frona Eunice Wait, Wines and Vines of California. San Francisco: Bancroft Company, 1889. Idwal Jones, Vines in the Sun. New York: William Morrow, 1949.
Vincent P. Carosso, The California Wine Industry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951, 408.
Robert Lawrence Balzer, Wines of California. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1978.
“The Haraszthy Family,” manuscript, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Hutchinson, John N. “The Astonishing Hungarian.” Wine and Food [London], No. 137 (Spring 1968).
Hugh Johnson. Vintage: The Story of Wine. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.
Penhinou, Ernest P., and Sidney S. Greenleaf. A Dictionary of Wine Growers and Wine Makers in 1860. Berkeley: Tamalapais Press, 1967.
Sullivan, Charles L. “A Man Named Agoston Haraszthy.” Parts 1-3. Vintage Magazine, February-April, 1980.
Sullivan, Charles L. A Companion to California Wine. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998.
Sullivan, Charles L., Zinfandel: A History of a Grape and It's Wine. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003..