A Short History of Sonoma

4. A Vine Tradition

67 Chapter Four A Vine Tradition On June 6, 1863, the “Married” column of the San Francisco Daily Alta California newspaper carried a brief announcement of a double wedding ceremony that took place in Sonoma on the first of the month. In two short paragraphs readers learned that Natalia and Jovita Vallejo, daughters of General M. G. Vallejo, had married A. F. and Arpad Haraszthy, respectively, and that the ceremony was observed at the home of the brides. The kind of people who read marriage announcements in San Francisco’s most important paper were very aware of who General M. G. Vallejo was. During the nearly twenty years since the Bear Flag Revolt, Vallejo had become a well-known and respected landowner and state legislator, venerated for literally putting Sonoma on the map. And though his name was not mentioned, most Bay Area readers also knew who the father of A. F. and Arpad Haraszthy was. Especially if they were wine drinkers. For Agoston Haraszthy was not just the father of the grooms. He was (and is) also considered by many to be the father of California wine. The wedding was therefore more than just the joining of two families . It symbolized the blending of the two strands of history for which Sonoma is still known today. One is the city’s origins in the crucible of Spanish and Mexican expansion, symbolized by the general himself. The 68 a s h o r t h i s t o r y o f s o n o m a other is Sonoma’s storied wine industry, which owes much to Haraszthy’s marketing genius. Without these two men, winemaking in the Valley of the Moon might never have happened. it starts, of course, with the grapes. When Spanish missionaries arrived in California, they built churches and living quarters for themselves and the native peoples they hoped to convert. They also needed to grow food, and it was just as important to cultivate grapes to make wine, both for the sacrament of the Mass and for the table. These men came to their posts via Spain and Mexico, where they had learned the rudiments of winemaking, an essential skill for any missionary. The padres at the southern California missions were the first to plant vineyards, though they did find wild grapes growing all over the region. Today these varieties are known as either Vitis californica or Vitis girdiana ; the former is found in the northern part of the state, the latter in the south. However, no one knows if the missionaries tried to use this fruit to make wine. If they did, the results must have been unsatisfactory , if not undrinkable, because it seems that the padres wanted to grow grapes—instead of gather them—fairly soon after their arrival. The first non-native vines planted in California were probably those at Mission San Juan Capistrano, brought there by a supply ship from Mexico in May 1778. The premier vintages were made around 1782, and vineyards were soon installed at missions from San Diego to San Francisco. While waiting for the vines to mature, the missionaries had to import wine from missions in Baja California. This was a source of annoyance to everyone in the area. Even Father Junípero Serra vented his irritation in a letter to fellow Father Fermín Lasuén, saying that the lack of wine for the Mass was becoming “unbearable.” So what did the padres actually plant? Today the variety is called the Mission grape, but it originated in Spain, where it went by a number of names. Juice from this grape variety made a rather sweet, low-acid wine, and it was sometimes fortified with brandy to make a golden dessert cordial called Angelica. Served at table, the wine got mixed reviews, depending on the taste of the drinker. a v i n e t r a d i t i o n 69 When Father José Altimira founded Mission San Francisco Solano in 1823, planting grapes was one of his priorities. In the annual report to his superiors written at the end of 1824, he stated that there were one thousand grapevines in the ground, in a patch about three hundred yards east of the mission buildings. His vines probably came from cuttings taken at Mission San José, founded south of San Francisco in 1797. The hot, dry climate there was...