Arpad Haraszthy

Who was Arpad Haraszthy?

Arpad Haraszthy was a pioneer California winemaker best known as the creator of Eclipse champagne, the first commercially successful sparkling wine produced in the state. He was the first president of the California State Board of Viticultural Commissioners, one of the founding members and first officers of San Francisco's world-famous Bohemian Club, and a frequent and articulate writer on wine, winemaking, and viticulture. He has been criticized by some modern wine historians for his claims that his father, Agoston Haraszthy, imported the first Zinfandel grape vines to California in the early 1850s. Zinfandel later became famous as California's best grape for the production of red table wine. Arpad Haraszthy's claims about his father's importations of Zinfandel have neither been proved nor disproved, and they remain a subject of controversy.