Sonoma County vineline–1800’s

29Aug07

What’s “Breaking News At Five!” is history tomorrow. Each week Bay Time Reporter reveals San Francisco Bay Area truths and tales. We’ll travel through time, play Pomo games of chance, and count Miwok harvest moons. We’ll embark from distant ports aboard wood-masted ships, and trudge up California’s coast with missionary zeal. We’ll catch Gold Fever and step lightly past the the Black Plague. Earthquakes will not deter us, and grand schemes of monopoly and empire will get their due. We’ll meet Counts and no-counts, merchants and madams, bohos, billionaires and bums. This San Francisco Bay Area, magnet for innovators and interlopers, charismatics and oddballs, seekers of every color, creed and conscience reminds us of the equation: NOW x THEN + ?*%#! = That which awaits us, over the horizon.

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Sonoma County Vineline–1800’s:

1817 – Fort Ross colonists acquire grape vines from Peru. Attempts at Siberian-style wine produce what you might expect.

1825 – Franciscan Jose Altimira has native neophytes plant grapevines around Mission San Francisco Solano de Sonoma. Vines mature a few years later. First wine is pressed, imparting upon the Mission Grape varietal it’s well-deserved reputation for producing pitiable plunk.

June 14, 1846 – A crack team of rebel negotiators smack rifle-butts against General Mariano Vallejo’s Sonoma Plaza-facing front door. A gracious and expectant Vallejo invites the diplomats in, then surrenders his sword to them. The Bear Flaggers puzzle this gesture, but fully comprehend Vallejo’s brandy and wine offering. Curiously, negotiations take longer than expected. Consequently, the rebels elect a second negotiator. He too is sent into Vallejo’s adobe. Once inside all attempts to revive passed out comrades fail, and, following many more brutal rounds of diplomatic toasting, the second negotiator joins his pals for a few winks on the floor. Finally, the remaining Plaza rebels elect a third lead negotiator, who, fortunately for them, is an abstainer.

1856 – Bon Vivant ex-sheriff entrepreneur Agoston Haraszthy, acquitted of felony embezzlement, moves north to Sonoma. Haraszthy initiates the first ferry service from Sonoma to San Francisco, employs Chinese in digging out his champagne caves, is appointed to lead the State’s first wine commission, and purchases land that becomes Buena Vista Winery.

1861 – Haraszthy returns from Europe with over 300 varieties of Vitus vinifera. He will be remembered as “the Father of the California Wine Industry”, and, as a Nicaraguan alligator snack.

1875 - Midwestern native Phylloxera’s world culinary tour comes to town. A notorious gourmand, our microscopic root louse dines and dines on Sonoma County vines.

1889 – Louse-ridden Sonoma County vineyards hand their wine crown to yet-to-be infested Napa at the World’s Fair in Paris. This sparks a feud that transcends grapes and wine, and eventually leads to auto parts.

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And finally–from our Wacky Sixties files–We’re reminded of a televisionary episode in Sonoma County history. Any of you old enough to remember Vic Morrow’s WWII series, Combat, may recall battle scenes shot amidst redwood stumps in a Russian River vineyard. The Korbel brothers, before creating bubbles, carved out their living from redwoods turned into cigar boxes for clientele in San Francisco. The Korbels even built a railway to transport their product. But long after these Bohemian brothers (as in fraternal Czechs) had bid this life adieu, their heirs faced a rather deep rooted problem. Redwood tree stumps hogged half their vineyard space! What to do about the expensive and work intensive job of uprooting these enormous stumps? An agreement was struck. Korbel would provide canvas for depictions of all nature of mayhem to be cinematically recorded, and, in return, Combat’s producers promised that no blast would be set lest it took out one of those damned vineyard stumps.

Filed under: Agoston Haraszthy, Bay Time Detective, Bear Flag Revolt, Buena Vista Winery, California Missions, Chinese, Combat, Fort Ross, Jose Altimira, Mayacamas Mountains, Miwok, Napa Valley, Native Americans, North Bay, Phyllloxera, Pomo, Russian River, Russians, San Francisco, San Francisco Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area History, San Francisco Phax & Phikshun, Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, Sonoma Mission, Sonoma Mountains, Sonoma Valley, Valley of the Moon, Vitus vinifera, grape vines, legend, mystery, redwoods, thieves & scoundrels, wine, wine country   |  Leave a Comment