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It is 1857. Count Agoston Haraszthy plants twenty-five acres of vines near the town of Sonoma
to found the Buena Vista Winery. More than thirty years earlier, the Franciscan Fathers of
Mission San Francisco Solano de Sonoma
had planted vines to produce sacramental wine, but the modest Buena Vista planting is sufficient
to double the vine acreage in Sonoma and subsequently earn Count Haraszthy the distinction of
being the Father of Modern Viticulture in California.
Count Haraszthy was born in Hungary in 1812. (Historians disagree on the
title Count but agree that his family were members of the Hungarian nobility.)
At the age of eighteen, he was commissioned into the Royal Hungarian Guards of Francis I,
Emperor of Austria-Hungary. As a young man, he became friends of the
Transylvanian reformer, Baron Wesselenyi, and the Hungarian revolutionary, Louis Kossuth.
When his two friends were arrested for treason in 1837, the Count left his wife and family
and fled to New York City.
On this first visit to the United States, the Count traveled to Washington, Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Iowa, Kansas and Wisconsin, where he and the English aristrocrat Robert Bryant
purchased 10,000 acres of land. While in Washington, he met influential Americans, including
Daniel Webster and President Tyler, and used their influence to obtain a safe-conduct pass
for a return visit to his family in Hungary.
The Count convinced his father to liquidate the Hungarian estate and relocate the
entire family to Wisconsin where they built the town Szdptaj, Hungarian for
Beautiful View or Buena Vista.
His Wisconsin property was amenable to raising grain, hops and sheep, but the
Count was intent on cultivating the quality vines he remembered from his homeland.
To this end, the family again liquidated their property and departed for California
on Christmas, 1848, by way of the Kansas Territory where they formed a wagon train
of sixty people including the Count's wife, father, step-mother and his six children.
A yesr later, the arrived in San Diego, population about 650 souls.
While in San Diego, the Count planted orchards, opened a butcher shop, established
omnibus service and a livery stable, became San Diego's first City Marshall and
cleaned up the rowdy waterfront by encouraging miscreants to head for the gold
mines of Northern California, incited an uprising of native American farmers,
and was elected to the State Assembly where he introduced a bill to divide
California into two states: Southern and Northern. Alas, the bill failed.
The San Diego climate being unsuited to viticulture, the Count purchased land
near Mission Dolores in 1852,
and the family moved north to San Francisco. Subsequently, the Count purchased additional
land south of San Francisco near Crystal Springs. As was his wont, he immersed
himself in local business, government and civic affairs and soon President Pierce
appointed him to be the first
Assayer of the Mint.
In 1857, the Count visited General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo at
Lachrima Montis
in Sonoma where he found the land he had been searching for.
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