Clockwise from left: Joseph Banks, Thomas Jefferson, Jean-Louis Vignes, Agoston Haraszthy and William Lee. ‘All larger-than-life explorers with an eye on what history would say about them. And all united by their impact on the growth of Cabernet Sauvignon in California.’
course, there was Sauvignon Blanc – which, a century earlier, had been one half of a spontaneous crossing with Cabernet Franc to produce Cabernet Sauvignon. The recipient of the vines was Peter Legaux. Born in Metz, northeastern France, Legaux had emigrated to the United States in 1786 after what seems to have been a colourful and slightly shady life as a local politician in both France and the French West Indies. He seems to have annoyed several of his new neighbours in America too, but he is also the first of the men at our dining table to have genuinely focused his life on bringing viticulture to the United States. On arrival in Philadelphia, he bought a 206-acre estate at Spring Mill, Montgomery County, where he began planting European vines and building vaults for storage of wine. In 1793 the Pennsylvania General Assembly authorized the incorporation of a company to promote Legaux’s vineyard by subscription – making clear that he was looking for investors. Legaux was nothing if not ambitious, writing to Jefferson in March 1801 to congratulate him on the presidency and offering to send him thousands of vines to plant in Virginia. When Jefferson politely declined, Legaux tried again, writing to him about the difficulties in establishing his vineyard and inviting the president to become an investor. He apparently was not able to coax any money from him (in fact, let’s assume Jefferson would not want to be seated next to Legaux at our dinner), but nonetheless, he did send vines to Jefferson’s Monticello estate in 1802.
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ON THE CUSP OF DISCOVERY…
A few years later, the Bordeaux vines arrive from Lee. Legaux’s diary entry for April 15th 1805, held by the American Philosophy Society, records: ‘This day at ½ past 10 o’clock at Night, I received a letter from Mr McMahon with 3 boxes of Grapevines, sended by Mr Lee Consul Americain from Bordeaux, all in very good order and good plantes of Châteaux Margeaux, Lafitte and Haut Brion. 4,500 plantes for 230# . . . and order to send in Town for more etc.’ We don’t know if any of these vines ended up in California in the following decades, but we do know that Legaux’s vineyard went a long way to establishing an industry that was slowly but inexorably heading west, and we know that early vines in California came from two sources: European imports and shipments from these earlier-established vineyards in New England, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Twenty years later, and we finally have near-certainty of Cabernet Sauvignon making its way west. It came care of Jean-Louis Vignes (or Don Luis Vignes as he was known locally in a region that was heavily Spanish-influenced at the time). Vignes (yes, it really does translate as ‘vines’) emigrated in 1826 from the Bordeaux region, arriving in El Dorado, California, in 1831. Vignes was born in Cadillac, a small wine producing town on Bordeaux’ Right Bank, that has had, incidentally, a disproportionately large influence on American culture: first with Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac – who founded Detroit in 1701 and was immortalized with the Cadillac car – and now Vignes, less well known but whose legacy can be felt every time you open a glass of Napa Cab. Descendants of Vignes still live in California; they look after a family archive that was initially created by Pierre Vignes, brother of Jean-Louis and a man who emigrated to work on his brother’s successful vineyard in the 1840s. Vignes apparently left France, with his wife and four children, in November 1826 intending to establish a sugar plantation in the Sandwich Islands, but instead he ended up near Honolulu, where he raised sugar cane, vines and cattle, before finding a job heading up a distillery. When the distillery closed, Vignes, who was already 51, uprooted his family again, boarding the trading vessel Louisa in May 1831 to set sail for Monterey. Two years later he made his way to the pueblo (or small town as it was then) of Los Angeles. Vignes bought a tract of land adjacent to the Los Angeles River (I’m thinking this would have had a similar layout to the farm one he came from in Cadillac – a wine growing town set on the banks of Bordeaux’s Garonne River). Here he laid out El Aliso Vineyard and became the most important winemaker in California, producing as many as 182,000 litres (something like 243,000 bottles) a year. We know that he planted the local Mission grape which was popular at the time, but also that he sent to Bordeaux for cuttings of the varieties that he knew from back home, and that almost certainly included Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon
THE ARRIVAL OF KING CABERNET
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