In the story about absinthe I discussed the ravaging effects that the phylloxera plague had on the vineyards of Europe. By the late 19th century nearly all of the vineyards in Europe where wiped out.
Sometimes called the AIDS of grape vines, an infestation of phylloxera louse weakens the vines and reduces grape production over time but does not kill them. These almost microscopic, sap-sucking insects, related to aphids, feed on the roots of grapevines. On Vitis Vinifera (the grape species indigenous to Europe) the resulting deformations on the roots provides a point of entry for secondary fungal infections that ultimately kill the vine.
Thanks to reading Darwin's theories on evolution an enterprising botanist found a solution to this blight. It came by grafting the Vitis Vinefera vines onto the Vitis Labrusca rootstock that was native to the northeastern region of America. The result has become a never-mentioned heresy in France, that their most famous vineyards are actually growing on American roots.
But there is an interesting flipside to this story. About the same time as the phylloxera scourge swept through Europe, a large selection of European vines were brought to California and planted throughout Sonoma and elsewhere. This meant that some old vine plantings in California are arguably more European than anything in Europe.
In 1861, one self-described "count" named Agoston Haraszthy, was appointed by the then governor of Californian to find the “ways and means best adapted to promote the improvement and growth of the grape-vine in California.” Haraszthy was the kind of adventuresome entrepreneur that today is often referred to as the father of California viticulture.
Haraszthy claimed that he was forced to leave Hungary in 1841 because his liberal political activities had drawn the wrath the Austrian royal family. He settled in Wisconsin and founded a winery that is still there, now called the Wollersheim Winery. He abandoned this effort when he concluded that Wisconsin winters were too severe to make great wines. He moved into the lumber business, made a small fortune and founded the town of Sauk City, Wisconsin. But he had his sights on a larger fortune.
The California gold rush caught his attention, but by 1852 Haraszthy realized he had missed the boom years and would be better served capitalizing on the hard work of others. When a branch of the U.S. Mint opened in San Francisco in April 1854, Haraszthy built a smelting refinery, called Eureka Gold and Silver and then he schmoozed his appointment as the first U.S. assayer and refiner for the Mint. A grand jury investigation of his operation led to a federal indictment charging Haraszthy with the embezzlement of $151,550 in gold.
A civil trial fully exonerated Haraszthy when he provided his own forensic evidence that quantified the loss of gold as resulting from inefficient smelting practices. He proved that this gold blew out of his smoke stacks leaving gold residue from soot samples he took from rooftops around San Francisco. True or not, it was a brilliant defense. And fortunately for wine lovers, this experience soured Haraszthy on gold refining and drove him back to viticulture. In 1856, he bought a small vineyard northeast of the town of Sonoma and renamed it Buena Vista.
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. Determined to be paid for this effort, he finagled a commission from the State to procure cutting from Europe, and off he went. He traveled through France, Germany, Switzerland, and Spain before returning with more than 100,000 cuttings of more than 350 different varieties of vines, fruit and nut trees.
Upon his return, the State of California reneged on this agreement and refused to pay him for his self-motivated boondoggle. When the state refused to reimburse him for his efforts he quite literally left in a huff. He sold all of these vines in a public auction, pocketed his profits, and moved to Central America. There he built a lumber mill to process Central American hardwoods and started a sugar plantation with plans for distilling rum. His death was a colorful as his life. Tragically, alligators ate Haraszthy while he was crossing a river in Nicaragua.
But Haraszthy's legacy in California remains huge. The entire fruit and nut industry owe him a debt of gratitude, and we wine lovers should toast him with a glass of old vine Zinfandel at every opportunity. As early as the 1870s, Haraszthy’s son Arpad Haraszthy claimed that his father brought the first Zinfandel to California. However, Charles Sullivan argues in his history of Zinfandel, that others had already brought the Zinfandel grape to the East Coast as early as the 1820s and to California in the 1850s.
Academic quibbling about the “first” California Zinfandel aside, Haraszthy is responsible for many of the vines that became or parented the “old vine” plantings that still exist in California today. Ironically, by the middle 1860s, the vines at Buena Vista were growing brown and weak. In fact, this was the result of the first infestation of phylloxera ever seen in California. His viticulture blessing on California was also its curse. Poetic justice, perhaps, for the mistreatment Haraszthy received from the State and Federal government.
In the case of phylloxera, what goes around, really does come around, eventually. The approach that Haraszthy took when acquiring those first vines was logical on the surface. He reasoned that by taking cuttings from the best vineyards of Europe would ensure the best vineyards in California. However, in my humble opinion, this logic took California viticulture down the wrong path for then next 100-plus years.
The state is dominated by grape varieties from microclimates nothing like those found in California. In fact, California is the only Mediterranean climate outside of the Mediterranean region. So, had Haraszthy taken his logic one step further, he would have restricted his search for vines to warmer regions and taken his cuttings from the best vineyards in northern Spain, central Italy and the Rhône valley of France.
Had he done this, today Roussanne, Tempanillo, Sangiovese and Syrah would rightly be the dominant grapes of California, instead of Chardonnay, Cabernet, Merlot and Pinot Noir. And, California wine lovers might not consider Napa the center of the universe.
