napa and sonoma county
° California Wines ° Marin ° Museums
° San Francisco (Sailing and Kayaking) ° The Giants
° Napa and Sonoma ° The Peninsula: Half Moon Bay
° Mendocino County ° Shasta County ° Yosemite National Park
Many of my favorite photographs (such as the egrets in the middle of a mating battle, left), were taken in Napa and Sonoma County, north of San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge during drives through California's exquisite winding backroads.
With friends and family, we've toured every country road there is, stopping at beaches, art galleries, fairs and festivals, coastal restaurants, and, of course, vineyards and tasting rooms.
Count Agoston Haraszthy
As noted on The Maritime Heritage Project site (our favorite site for international seaport history), we found the story of Count Agoston Haraszthy, a Hungarian Nobleman born in 1812 and instrumental in the development of viticulture in Sonoma County.He started in San Diego and worked his way to San Francisco, where he found the climate too cold to grow grapes. 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. In 1857 his attention was called to the vineyard of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo at Sonoma. At the time Haraszthy made his first appearance at Sonoma in 1857, Vallejo was the leading vintner.
He added acreage to his original purchase, eventually holding more than 5,000 acres 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 1856, a ship sailed through the Golden Gate with thousands of cuttings of Europe's choicest vines -- the Flame Tokay, Zinfandel, Muscat of Alexandria, Seedless Sultana, Black Morocco -- all selected by Haraszthy.
That Zinfandel grape is now the most planted grape in California. Haraszthy bought more land and named his new domain Buena Vista or "Beautiful View Again." By the end of 1857 he had more than tripled the total grape acreage of Sonoma Valley. In that single year he had planted 80,000 vines on about 118 acres.
Haraszthy's "Report on Grapes and Wines of California
In 1858, Haraszthy wrote a 19-page "Report on Grapes and Wines 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.
Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude