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"Lured by the discovery of gold to cross the plains to California in 1849, Haraszthy became the first sheriff of San Diego, a member of the California legislature, and the first assayer of the United States Mint in San Francisco. Long fascinated with the possibility of growing fine European grapes in America, he moved in 1856 to northern California's Sonoma Valley, where he built the first stone wineries in California, introduced more than 300 varieties of European grapes, and planted (or helped his neighbors plant) more than a thousand acres of choice wine vineyards. He made a well-publicized wine tour of Europe in 1861, wrote the first notable book on California wine growing, and built his Sonoma estate into what was widely advertised as "the largest vineyard in the world.""--BOOK JACKET.
The beginning of history for California wine starts with 17th-century , but the industry and commercial powerhouse that commands 60 percent of the United States market was birthed 200 years later, the product of a Hungarian aristocrat, European grapes, and the Sonoma Valley. In this groundbreaking book by historian and bestselling author Charles L. Sullivan, the untold history of Sonoma wine serves as backdrop to the turbulent story of California s first commercial winery, Buena Vista, from its founding by brilliant but quixotic Agoston Haraszthy, through phyloxera plague and the dry years of prohibition to its present-day market prominence. Sonoma Wine and the Story of Buena Vista is a scholarly study of two centuries of California wine history, told in a riveting narrative that will engage and delight.
This second volume in Kevin Starr's passionate and ambitious cultural history of the Golden State focuses on the turn-of-the-century years and the emergence of Southern California as a regional culture in its own right. "How hauntingly beautiful, how replete with lost possibilities, seems that Southern California of two and three generations ago, now that a dramatically diferent society has emerged in its place," writes Starr. As he recreates the "lost California," Starr examines the rich variety of elements that figured in the growth of the Southern California way of life: the Spanish/Mexican roots, the fertile land, the Mediterranean-like climate, the special styles in architecture, the rise of Hollywood. He gives us a broad array of engaging (and often eccentric) characters: from Harrision Gray Otis to Helen Hunt Jackson to Cecil B. DeMille. Whether discussing the growth of winemaking or the burgeoning of reform movements, Starr keeps his central theme in sharp focus: how Californians defined their identity to themselves and to the nation.
The Zinfandel grape—currently producing big, rich, luscious styles of red wine—has a large, loyal, even fanatical following in California and around the world. The grape, grown predominantly in California, has acquired an almost mythic status—in part because of the caliber of its wines and its remarkable versatility, and in part because of the mystery surrounding its origins. Charles Sullivan, a leading expert on the history of California wine, has at last written the definitive history of Zinfandel. Here he brings together his deep knowledge of wine with the results of his extensive research on the grape in the United States and Europe in a book that will entertain and enlighten wine ...
Wine insiders called André Tchelistcheff the “winemaker’s winemaker,” the “wine doctor,” and simply “maestro.” After Prohibition brought Napa Valley and its wine industry to the brink of catastrophe, Tchelistcheff (1901–94) proved essential in its revitalization. Tchelistcheff’s unique background—a sickly child, a Russian émigré forced from his homeland during the Bolshevik Revolution, a White Army lieutenant who fought in the Crimea, a physical laborer in a Bulgarian coal mine, a Czechoslovakian-trained agronomist, and a French-schooled viticulturist and enologist—prepared him for a remarkable winemaking career. He spent thirty-five years in Napa Valley’s Beaulieu...
The sparkling wines of California rival the best French Champagnes today, but their place at our tables came about through careful craftsmanship that began more than a century ago. The predecessor of today’s California bubbly was Eclipse Champagne, the first commercially successful California sparkling wine, produced by Arpad Haraszthy in the mid- to late nineteenth century. In A Toast to Eclipse, Brian McGinty offers a definitive history of the wine, exploring California’s winemaking past and two of the people who put the state’s varietal wines on the map: Arpad and his father Agoston Haraszthy, the legendary “father of California viticulture.” Inspired by his father’s dream of ...