Mediaș · Transylvania · since 1862
Michael Ambrosi named Fetească Regală and carried grafted vines from the Târnava valley to the Baltic countries, to South Africa and into the cellars of Europe. A family history, reconstructed from documents.
Manifesto
Ambrosi is not a winery that wrote its story after the wine was sold. It is a nursery that became a school and then an export network: four generations, from 1862 to 2012, from a boy who left school at thirteen to work the family's vines to a director of the Hessian state vineyards. Between them, a trading firm with its own catalogue, railway siding and labels, a nursery at Aiud and seventy hectares at Crăciunel.
The story rests on two pioneers. Caspari worked westward, Ambrosi east and south — and, later, across the ocean — and together they gave late nineteenth-century Europe the technical answer to phylloxera: American rootstock, grafting and a vine school. That answer can be read today in 55 documents, from 1901 to 1996: the 1909 article, the 1936 catalogue, the advertisements, the labels, the letters. They do not illustrate the story; they hold it up.
The story
From a family of cultivators in the Târnava valley to an export house with its own catalogue, railway siding and labels. The chapters follow the people, not their legend.
The whole storyChronology
Drag or use the arrow keys to walk the milestones from 1862 to 2012.
Replanting Europe1862 01 / 26
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The 1909 dossier
Michael Ambrosi jun.'s 1909 article explains, with soil, a calcimeter and rooting temperatures, how an entire region was replanted — and why the graft won.
Read the dossierPhylloxera appears in France in 1863 and reaches the Târnava vineyards in 1889. Transylvania then had roughly 10,650 ha of vines, 6,760 ha of them in the Târnava zone. In 1909 Michael Ambrosi jun. describes the confusion of the first years: quarantine and enforced uprooting did not stop the disease, and carbon disulphide treatment worked only on light, dry soils. In old vineyards, with roots close to the surface and irregular planting, even that method could not be applied properly. "In the nineties phylloxera wrought its worst destruction in the Transylvanian vineyards," he writes. The answer could not come from chemistry; it had to come from planting material.
The answer was an operation of vegetal engineering: an American rootstock resistant to phylloxera, grafted with the European variety. Ambrosi describes choosing the rootstock by soil and by calcium content, measured with Bernard's calcimeter; deep ripping to 60–80 cm, planting at 120 cm, green grafting in place or wooden grafting in the nursery. "Moosveredlung" — rooting the grafts in heated rooms at 20–24°C, on moss and wood shavings — made the difference between a small nursery and one that shipped millions of vines. At Aiud, at Buftea and at Crăciunel, Ambrosi applied exactly these methods.
In 1909 there were two large nurseries in Transylvania, producing millions of grafts a year and employing 800–1000 people together in season. Ambrosi built one of them at Aiud, under the name Ambrosi, Fischer & Co., and led it from 1912. At Buftea, for Prince Știrbey, he organised 40 ha of rootstock vineyard, 12 ha of grafted-vine school, an irrigation system of about 3 million litres a day, and crops of 8–10 million vines a year. The 1936–37 catalogue lists varieties, rootstocks and prices, with written guarantees of authenticity and take.
The grafted vine left Transylvania by rail: to Romania, to the Baltic countries and, later, to South Africa. The catalogue was not a vanity brochure but a working tool: conditions of sale, an eight-day claim period, guarantees limited to the invoice value, dispatch at the buyer's risk. In 1936 the firm counted "more than 35 years" of existence. The Ambrosi name thus entered the same commercial map as Caspari, with one difference: Ambrosi added to the nursery the cultivation of large areas, the storage and the sale of wine.
Routes of grafted vines from the Kokel valley to the vineyards of Europe, after the export catalogues.
The future belongs to the grafted vine.
Letters of thanks
On tasting, for the first time, good Transylvanian wine, I was astonished at its rich flavour, its peculiarly pleasant freshness, and at the fire lurking within such liquid gold.
I know that they are of rare excellence. Some were sent here to the exhibition and, as I was on the jury, I tasted them. They were delicious, and possessed all the best qualities looked for in wine. We accorded the first prize — the great gold medal — to wine from Transylvania. This wine was from Mediasch.
Today, when we can look back on some fifteen years of experience, it may be said that the future belongs to grafted vines.
Among the smaller undertakings there are two large vine nurseries in Transylvania, where several million grafts are produced every year and where, in the main working season, some 800–1000 workers are employed together.
Through the replanting of the vineyards our Saxon peasant has learned to work deliberately.
The Skilled Vine Grower. A practical guide to the rational cultivation of the vine, according to the nature of the land and the climatic conditions of Romania.
We guarantee the authenticity of the varieties and are ready to replace a variety wrongly supplied, but we do not bind ourselves to a compensation greater than the value of the plants on the relevant invoice.
In more than thirty-five years of our firm's existence, our clients have never had reason to bring their complaints before the public courts.
Give Transylvanian wine!
Connections
The other pioneer of grafting and the prince whose nurseries at Drăgășani and Buftea passed through Michael Ambrosi jun.'s hands. Two names that explain the network.
Teacher, state commissioner for phylloxera, pioneer of grafting
The other pioneer of the replanting. Friedrich Caspari (1858–1935) studied viticulture at Klosterneuburg in 1891 and, on his return, was appointed state commissioner for combating phylloxera. From 1892 he worked for ten years alongside Michael Ambrosi sen.: courses, popular lectures, vine schools. His career ran westward — Transylvania, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Russia — and left its mark on nursery work in the Kokel valley. The 1907/08 catalogue, with prices, varieties and letters from clients, shows what that collaboration produced. His papers are held separately, but the story is the same.
The nurseries at Drăgășani and Buftea
Prince Barbu Știrbey built one of Romania's largest vine nurseries at Drăgășani and Buftea. Michael Ambrosi jun. became its associate and director in 1907: here he found 40 ha of rootstock vineyard, 10 ha of grafted-vine school and 30 ha of apricots and plums, while the Buftea orchard, begun in 1904 with 10 ha, had reached 50 ha by 1909. In the grafting season 800–1000 people worked there daily, most of them local. The nursery's advertisement, administered by Ambrosi, Fischer & Co. after 1917, preserves the connection.
Gräfenberg · Mediaș · Crăciunel
A hill above the town, a network of depots beside the railway and seventy hectares at Crăciunel. The Ambrosi house was never only a vineyard: it was a system of production, storage and delivery.
The house documentsGräfenberg is the name of the hill rising above Mediaș and, in the family's documents, the name of the vineyard on it. Michael Ambrosi sen. planted twenty hectares here with vines and American hybrid rootstocks — an area which, for a grower in the Târnava valley, already meant a business rather than a garden. In 1919 his son took over the vineyards; in 1924 he moved to Mediaș, and Gräfenberg became the base of systematic work: clone selections for Mädchentraube (Fetească), Königsast and Italian Riesling, and rootstock selections of Riparia × Berlandieri under the name “Selecția Ambrosi”.
The second part of the system was storage. Ambrosi held Transylvania's wine logistics depots at Mediaș, sited there because the town had a railway, and the railway was then the principal means of transport. Here the wine that went to the markets of the kingdom and the monarchy was gathered, held and prepared for dispatch. The paperwork of that circuit survives: the envelope “Viile și Pivnițele Ambrosi, Mediaș”, the labels Ambrosi Imperial and Ambrosi Privat, the expert report and the house catalogue. They show a business that thought in seasons, in wagons and in stock.
At Crăciunel, Michael Ambrosi sen. held seventy hectares, an area on a different scale from the vineyard at Mediaș. After nationalisation this land became the basis of today's Viticulture and Vinification Research and Development Station at Blaj — a rare continuity: the land remained a vineyard even when the name on the deeds changed. Alfred Ambrosi took over the Crăciunel estates in 1927 and worked there with his own rootstock, “Ambrosi-special”, which he selected and propagated.
Today the documents can be read, visits arranged and the route between hill, depot and station reconstructed. The land is mostly working land or outside public access, and the cellar does not operate as a museum: visits are by arrangement through contact.
The archive
55 documents, 1901–1996 — advertisements, labels, letters, photographs and the 1936 catalogue of the Ambrosi, Fischer & Co. nursery. Each has a year, a source and a story to read.
The whole archive
A page of «Revista economică» (Sibiu, 16 March 1901) announcing lectures on vine growing in twelve Saxon communes, between 20 February and 21 March, with «dl comisar în afacerea filoxerei Fr. Caspari» as instructor. At the foot of the page stands the Budapest exchange rate of 14 March 1901, with wheat at 7.75 crowns.
Source BCU Cluj
The page of «Bunul econom» from Orăștie (29 October 1905), where Mihail Ambrosi’s notice for «irreproachable grafted vines» sits beside an advertisement for the Török lottery in Budapest. The text presents itself as «the first Transylvanian vine school in Mediaș (Medgyes)».
Source BCU Cluj
A small notice in which the firm presents itself as «the first Transylvanian vine school in Mediaș (Medgyes)», run by Mihail Ambrosi, «vine proprietor and chairman of the viticulture commission of the Saxon agricultural society of Transylvania». It offers «irreproachable grafted vines», as well as vine tops and roots, European and American.
Source BCU Cluj
The cover of the German edition of «Der praktische Weinbauer» by «M. Ambrosi jun.», published at the Association’s own press, «Selbstverlag des Siebenb.-sächsischen Landwirtschaftsvereins, Hermannstadt». The cover bears the library stamp of the Association, and the Romanian edition was to appear only in 1913, at Craiova, under the title «Podgoreanul priceput».
Source Biblioteca Astra Sibiu
An illustrated advertisement for the tree and vine schools run jointly by «Fischer & Comp. și M. Ambrosi» at Aiud (Nagyenyed), on 100 yokes of land. The figures announced are 80,000 fruit trees, a million hedge plants and «1½ million grafted vines», European and American, with and without roots.
Source BCU Cluj
The fourth page of the «Gazeta Transilvaniei» of 10 September 1906, with the illustrated advertisement «Fischer & Comp. Nagyenyed (Ungaria)» for the two tree and vine schools. Beside it the paper prints the day’s exchange rates and the grain prices at Brașov.
Source BCU Cluj
The documents are ordered chronologically, oldest first. The archive gathers material assembled between 2005 and 2021; the originals are kept in Mediaș, and the selection here can be consulted on request.
Explore the archiveThe wines
The variety that owes its name to Ambrosi, alongside Traminer, Mädchentraube and Rheinriesling — and the period labels that carried them on the bottle.
All the winesThe Ambrosi house
Single-variety white under a historic Ambrosi house label
Page 14 of the family brochure reproduces an «Ambrosi Imperial Rheinriesling» label, with the line «Dr. Alfred Ambrosi, München» and the «Viile și Pivnițele» mark. The book's document chapter dates an «Ambrosi Imperial» label to the interwar years, and Alfred Ambrosi's German advertisements of 1967–1972 show that the name travelled on in Germany. The label is evidence of a wine trade, not of a surviving wine: it has no year, no tasting description, and it is not reconstructed. Rheinriesling links the Mediaș house to the Rieslings of the Rhine.
About the wineThe Ambrosi house
White table wine for everyday drinking, from a variety ripening in period III–IV
The name appears at Mediaș around 1920, after the clonal selections made by Michael Ambrosi jun. at Gräfenberg from Mädchentraube (Fetească), Königsast and Italian Riesling; the family brochure says that he was the variety's «godfather». The «Ambrosi, Fischer & Co.» catalogue of 1936–37 lists it as no. 24 with the phrase «the preferred variety for extraordinarily abundant production», ripening in period III–IV and giving a «very good table wine». Today it is the most widely planted variety in Romania, at roughly 12,661 ha. We know of no wine from that period that has survived: the note concerns a name and a document, not a bottle.
About the wine1964
Late-harvest white (Spätlese) as advertised in the 1960s
Mädchentraube is the old Saxon name of Fetească. Michael Ambrosi jun.'s 1909 article mentions it among the less productive varieties, at 15–25 hl per yoke, and the 1936–37 catalogue describes it as an «old speciality of Transylvania» yielding «the finest wines». Dr. Alfred Ambrosi's advertisement announces a «1964er Mädchentraube Spätlese», sold in Germany. The year 1964 belongs to the advertisement, not to a bottle we could reconstruct; we do not invent tasting notes.
About the wineThe Ambrosi house
Aromatic single-variety white from the old Transylvanian range
The name comes from the German advertisements of Dr. Alfred Ambrosi, placed after his emigration to Munich: they announced «Sortenweine aus Siebenbürgen» and, among them, «Traminer u. Mädchentraube». The pairing of the two varieties shows how Transylvanian wines were sold in Germany in the 1960s — by variety and by the old Saxon name — not by a year or a place. We have no bottle, no dated label and no tasting description; we therefore offer neither a vintage nor tasting notes. It remains a commercial name, documented in print.
About the wineThe historical wines are presented as documentary evidence, not as products available today.
Context
The project is supported by the «Discover Mediaș!» network: Core of Transylvania, The Wine Metropolis, Hermann Oberth, methane gas, the citadel, the shop and TouristCard.eu — seven ways of reading the same town and the same archive.
Visit
Gräfenberg, the depots of Mediaș and the town itself: the places where the story can be read on the ground, document by document.
Gräfenberg and the depots are not an open museum: visits are arranged case by case, through contact.
Write to us
Pitz
The story guide
The city sommelier. Your guide through 800 years of wine-growing history.
Good wine is not drunk quickly. It is listened to.
Pitz the Sommelier
