Agoston Haraszthy

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Agoston Haraszthy
Mansion on the Bueno Vista Ranch in Sonoma (1862)

Ágoston Haraszthy (born August 30, 1812 in Pest , Austrian Empire ; died July 6, 1869 in Corinto , Nicaragua ) was a Hungarian pioneer of viticulture in North America.

Life

Ágoston Haraszthy de Mokcsa came from a land-owning family in Hungary who also operated viticulture in the Batschka . In 1833 he married Eleonora Dedinszky, who also came from the lower nobility. They had seven children. Haraszthy left Hungary in 1840 and settled in Wisconsin , where he bought land in what is now Sauk City . After his return in 1842 he wrote a travelogue about America, which appeared in Pest in 1844. Haraszthy returned with the family to Wisconsin, where he began various projects, in addition to growing grain, he founded a brick factory, a winery, ran sheep and ran a steamboat on the Wisconsin River . However, in 1849, following the gold rush, he set out for California and settled in San Diego , where he began various activities again and was elected sheriff of San Diego County in 1850 . In September 1851 he was elected as a San Diego MP to the California State Assembly , but was only elected for one year.

In San Francisco he took part in a metallurgical company. Because of irregularities in the gold settlement, investigations were initiated against him from 1857 on, but these were discontinued in 1861.

Haraszthy moved to Sonoma in 1856 . He founded the Buena Vista Winery there . In 1861 he brought back over 100,000 seedlings of more than 350 grape varieties from a trip to Europe. In 1863 he married two of his sons with daughters of the large landowner and Californian politician Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo . In the mid-1860s the phylloxera attack destroyed his vines, and in 1867 his business went bankrupt, which was then continued by others. In 1868 he moved to Nicaragua to build up a rum production with sugar cane for the US market. Haraszthy and his wife died in Corinto.

See also

Fonts

  • Utazas Éjszakamerikában . Pest, 1844
  • Grape culture, wines, and wine-making: with notes upon agriculture and horticulture . New York: Harper, 1862
    • Theodore Schoenman (Ed.): Father of California wine: Agoston Haraszthy; including grape culture, wines & wine-making . New edition with a foreword by Robert L. Balzer. Santa Barbara, Calif. : Capra Press, 1979 (not viewed)

literature

  • Brian MacGinty: Strong wine: the life and legend of Agoston Haraszthy . Stanford, Calif. ; Stanford Univ. Press, 1998 ISBN 0-8047-3146-2 (not viewed)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Haraszthy, Ágoston
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian-American winemaker
DATE OF BIRTH August 30, 1812
PLACE OF BIRTH Plague (city)
DATE OF DEATH July 6, 1869
Place of death Corinto