I was in Chicago a couple of weeks ago for the big NRA show…no not that one, the National Restaurant Association show. The NRA is among the largest restaurant shows in the country, held at McCormick Place, one of the largest convention centers in the country. This show, held each May, covers all facets of the hospitality industry from the new, most innovative way to make an onion ring to high-tech inventory and marketing systems. Last year they added a separate Wine & Spirits show to the event; one of this year’s speakers was Kevin Zaraly, noted author and wine educator of Windows of the World fame. I have been going to the show these last few years with my friend Quigley, who I was in the food business with about a decade ago.

 Although I attend this show as a guest, I am always on the lookout for something that relates to the wine business and they do show wines from the different foreign pavilions, for example Chile and Argentina. Also there is a large area where they taste different domestic wines and this is where I found myself last Saturday. I was talking with a young man who was sampling a few Zinfandels and I overheard the gentleman next him discussing wine with another guest. I listened in for a bit and when the guest left I asked the gentleman about the label and name of the wines he was pouring, Haraszthy Zinfandel. I explained to him that I was a wine educator and that in the month of May I have been teaching about Sonoma County and the history of the California wine industry. To most people the name Haraszthy is just a hard to pronounce name, but to those of us in the wine business Agoston Haraszthy is known as the father of California viticulture. A Hungarian merchant, he came to California after the Goldrush of 1849 and planted some samplings of different vitis vinefera, European grape varietals not native to the Americas, in Sonoma County around 1851. Over the next ten years he brought back 100,000 cuttings of over 300 different varieties of grapes. He also started a winery in 1857 called Buena Vista Winery.

  The coincidence of this meeting was two-fold, one I happened to be a guest at the 150 Year Anniversary of the Buena Vista Winery in 2007. Buena Vista, by the way, is the oldest continually working winery in California. The second was, as I was telling the gentleman pouring the Haraszthy wines that I was at this anniversary event and that I heard Agoston Haraszthy’s great-great-grandson speak at the celebration a smile came over his face and he handed me his business card. Val Haraszthy. He was and still is, the great-great-grandson who was telling all of us in attendance that day some of the stories of his family’s history as it related to Sonoma County's wine industry. I could see that he got a little kick out of the fact that I had been there and heard him speak. His family has not been a part of the winery for some time, but he was invited to retell some of the great stories of the early days of the California Wine trade.

Did I mention that Agoston Haraszthy left California for Nicaragua to try starting a Rum company, only to be eaten by a crocodile? That was one of the stories Val Haraszthy related to me as we talked on for about a half an hour or so before he had to get back to his wines.

Well, now when I talk at my wine classes about the early days of Napa & Sonoma I can tell the story of meeting and talking to the great-great-grandson of California Wines. It made for a very interesting afternoon; you just never know who you’re going to meet.

Ken Amendola

Wine Supervisor, North Florida