Chinese at Buena Vista Winery
Count Agoston Haraszthy, founder of Buena Vista Winery, was a Hungarian who immigrated to America in 1841 with the dream to make great European wine in America. As an immigrant himself, he was an important supporter of another immigrant group to America: the Chinese.
Ending up in San Diego in 1850, the Count was elected to the California state legislature in 1852—as the first representative from San Diego County. Chinese immigration to California was a large issue before the legislature. At the beginning of the Gold Rush in 1848 Chinese immigration was relatively small—and they were treated for the most part with courtesy and consideration. When San Francisco celebrated California’s admissions to the Union in October 1850, the Chinese joined in enthusiastically, and were welcomed by Californians. Encouraged by this first reception, Chinese begin to immigrate in greater numbers. They were good citizens—peaceable, thrifty, and exceedingly industrious.
But as the Chinese moved into the mining towns of the Sierra Nevada they encountered a wall of white hostility. It was believed by many miners that the Chinese were taking gold that should go to whites. Responding to complaints, California Gov. Bigler urged the legislature on April 23, 1852, to enact measures that would stem the tide of Chinese immigration. A new law was proposed, requiring that all “noncitizens” pay a monthly tax of three dollars for the privilege of mining gold. The Count took the lead against this proposed tax. When the measure was considered by the assembly he presided over the debate, and offered an amendment relieving anyone who declared their intention of becoming a citizen from paying the tax. The Count’s amendment lost by a vote of thirty-five to six —-and on the final vote the new tax was approved by forty “yes” votes to four “no” votes. The Count was one of the four opponents of the “noncitizen miner’s tax.”
The Count remained a passionate proponent of Chinese workers….believing them superior in industry to whites, and rarely subject to what was called: “bottle flu.” When he started Buena Vista Winery he made them his main workers—employing them to do all the work at his new winery. In 1857 they dug three tunnels into a hillside on his Buena Vista vineyards in order to store wine. These were the first wine caves in California. On a visit to Buena Vista you can still see the pick marks made by the Count’s Chinese workmen, as they used metal picks to cut three foot blocks of stone out of the solid rock of the Mayacamas Mountains.
In an article in the San Francisco daily newspaper Alta California, July 23, 1863, a reporter described: “Chinese grubbing out oak saplings” at the Buena Vista winery so the vineyards could be enlarged. In the champagne cellar, he saw “four Chinese, filling, corking, wiring, etc. champagne bottles.” He also mentioned, “there are now in progress, three new cellars, close to the press house. These are all being blasted and excavated by Chinese. They are to be twenty-six feet wide, thirteen feet in height and one hundred feet long.” Chinese workmen were furnished to the Buena Vista Winery by Ho Po, a San Francisco labor contractor. They often plowed the soil, pruned the vines, and excavated tunnels at night, if the heat of the day was too oppressive.
Chinese worked not only as laborers in the wineries and in the fields, but some were also engaged in the more technical aspects of winemaking. Young Moon—a resident of Glen Ellen—worked in the Chauvet Winery and Distillery in Glen Ellen, and was recognized as an experienced brandy distiller and blender, having learned these skills from the winery’s founder Joshua Chauvet. Even into the 1880s Chinese cellar bosses were quite common in the Sonoma Valley; as one resident explained: “you were able to trust them—they wouldn’t bother your wine.”
So important was the role of Chinese workers in California in the 1860’s that some contemporaries credited them with making possible “California’s rapid transition from a mining stronghold to an agricultural leader. Without these useful workers, California would at this day be scarcely more than Nevada—a great mining ground, whose wealth all flows away.” Charles L. Brace in the magazine New West wrote: “with Chinese labor and the immeasurable advantages of climate, the California farmer is able now to compete in the markets of the world with the farmers of Illinois and Indiana, and the peasants of the Black Sea.”
We at Buena Vista are proud of our Count’s support of California’s Chinese immigrants, and a visit to Buena Vista includes viewing many photographs of our Chinese workmen in the fields, washing bottles, bottling wine, picking grapes, disgorging Champagne, making barrels, and doing all that was necessary to make Buena Vista the first great wine estate in America.
But the Count was often criticized for employing Chinese. Racial feelings, already high when the Count was in the legislature in 1852, had grown even higher by 1857, and politicians spoke against the “Chinese menace” with a greater and greater vehemence. When the Count refused to stop their employment, demonstrations in the Sonoma Plaza took place—and threats were made against the Count and his family. To protect himself he began carrying a gun whenever he went out into the fields.
The Count refused to back down, and even after he left for Nicaragua to make rum in 1868 Chinese continued working at Buena Vista—this admirable relationship only ending in 1878 when Buena Vista closed its doors.
