Flap over cut vine at park home

The removal of a grapevine at the home of Gen. Mariano Vallejo, a popular stop at Sonoma State Historic Park, has left a descendant of the general fuming.

The Tokay vine was cut down a month ago behind Vallejo's house, where it had been growing on a trellis for at least the past 50 years.

"There was no reason to remove it," said Martha Vallejo-McGettigan of Napa, his great-great-granddaughter. "I was appalled when I heard about it."

Park officials said, however, the vine wasn't there during Vallejo's 35-year stay at the home and didn't fit in with the historical interpretation.

It also was being held up by a trellis that was failing, and the roots were pushing up the walkway, said Mary Pass, superintendent of California State Parks' Diablo Vista district.

"It was held up by wooden supports, and we had to figure out some way to shore it up," Pass said. "It was a safety issue."

Vallejo built the house in 1851 on land he acquired a half-mile from the Sonoma Plaza.

A winemaker, he had 3,000 vines and converted the barracks building, which at one time housed both Mexican and U.S. troops, into a winery in 1860.

Pass said Flame Tokay were the most likely grapes that Vallejo had planted on the property. The vine at the back of the house was not in a picture taken in 1934, but did appear in a 1951 photo.

"We had a cultural landscape report done on the whole landscape of the Vallejo home. . . . We are interpreting it to the 1880s to 1890s," Pass said. "The vine on the back side was not in the report, not considered a contributing factor to that time period."

Pass said they don't know if the vine was from Vallejo's original vineyard, but they will use clippings from it to re-establish a vineyard when a cultural landscape plan is drawn up.

But Vallejo-McGettigan, 61, said the vine helped explain how important grape-growing and winemaking are to Vallejo's story.

She said the vine was very old, measuring more than 7 inches in diameter, and was included in the docents' visitor tours.

"It doesn't matter that it wasn't exactly there," Vallejo-McGettigan said. "It was an important living artifact."

You can reach Staff Writer Bob Norberg at 521-5206 or bob.norberg@pressdemocrat.com.