故事
Mediaș was not simply a town with vineyards. It was a town that thought its budget in wine, placed its depots beside the railway and gave a whole region the name Weinland.…
Mediaș was not simply a town with vineyards. It was a town that thought its budget in wine, placed its depots beside the railway and gave a whole region the name Weinland. This page reads the context in which the Ambrosi family appeared.
Mediaș sits in the middle of the region the Saxons called Weinland — the land of wine. The name is older than the wine industry: it appears on the map of Transylvania published by Johannes Honterus at Basel in 1532. Specialists speak of eight centuries of vine growing in the Carpathian arc; for Mediaș that means the vine was never a fashion.
In 1865 Charles Boner, an English traveller in Transylvania, described the first good Transylvanian wine as something that astonished him by the fullness of its flavour, its peculiar freshness and the fire lurking in that “liquid gold”. At an exhibition, Baron Liebig is said to have told him that Transylvanian wines were of rare excellence and that the gold medal had gone to a wine from Mediaș. These are period testimonies, not slogans.
“Wine metropolis” is not a modern hyperbole. It describes an economy in which wine organised the town: the vineyards around it, the cellars beneath the houses, the merchants, the scales, the road to the station. When phylloxera arrived, it attacked not only a crop but the economic foundation of a town.
Between 1501 and 1858 Mediaș used wine as its unit of reference. Each year the town set the reference price of the measure of wine — 11.32 litres — and every other price and tax was calculated from it. It was not a symbol; it was accounting.
A town that ties its currency to wine ties its fate to the harvest. Hard winters, pests, transport and the quality of the must entered the municipal budget directly. Hence the habit of recording: registers, seals, scales. The town's seals show a hand holding a vine with three bunches — an image that reached the logo of Mediaș centuries later.
The system ended in 1858, but the reflex remained. When, at the end of the century, growers needed a commission and a school, they already had an administrative language for wine. The registers remain the best proof that wine was not only a drink but a unit of measure for everything sold and taxed in the town. Ambrosi did not invent the relationship between Mediaș and wine; he found it already written in the registers.
Phylloxera appeared in France in 1863. It is attested in the Târnava region in 1889, having already passed through the Hungarian vineyards. Transylvania then had about 10,650 ha under vines, of which 6,760 ha in the Târnava zone and between 920 and 1,520 ha in the other three wine zones. The figures belong to a region, not to a single estate.
The damage was not only economic. In the 1890s phylloxera and downy mildew worked together and destroyed, in practice, all the vineyards of the Kokel and Mureș regions, where “our noblest wines” grew — the phrase is from a report of 1909. The old vineyards, with roots close to the surface and irregular planting, could not be treated.
The answer was not to restore the old vineyard but to replace it. American rootstock, grafting, a vine school: the technique changed not only the plant but the trade. Phylloxera is, paradoxically, the moment when Transylvanian viticulture became modern — and the moment when a family of growers entered history.
In 1871 Mediaș had the first agricultural school in Transylvania. It is a detail that explains much: the town taught agriculture before it taught wine, and the nursery was understood as a school, not merely as a factory for rootstocks.
Michael Ambrosi jun. passed through the agricultural school at Mediaș between 1894 and 1897, then the dairy school at Sárvár and the viticulture academy at Budafok. He returned as a teacher at the agricultural apprenticeship school in Mediaș. At Buftea, in the grafting season, 800–1000 people worked, most of them local; the staff had been trained at Aiud. A nursery that trains a thousand people is, functionally, a school.
Knowledge travelled with the goods. Catalogues contained not only prices but instructions; the nursery's 1936 brochure explains the viticulture law and how to plant. A buyer of grafted vines bought a method together with the plant. That is the sense in which Ambrosi was a school of vines: it did not only sell rootstocks, it sold a way of working.
Today the “wine metropolis” can be read in a few places: in the depots near the station, in the cellars beneath the town, in the labels that survive and in the archive's 55 documents. And, of course, in the vineyard: Fetească Regală, the variety named here, covers some 12,661 ha in Romania.
Not everything that was a metropolis has remained spectacular. Some buildings have other uses, some land is working land, and the archive is more complete than the buildings. That is why the site does not promise a finished tourist trail; it promises a documented reading of the places that exist. What is being restored here is not a set but an economy.
An honest question remains: what does it mean to be a wine metropolis in a provincial town, after phylloxera, after nationalisation and after emigration? The answer is not a tourist panel. It is a network of people who care for the place — Core of Transylvania, Metropola de Vin, TouristCard.eu — and an archive that can be researched.
人物
葡萄委员会主席，苗圃经营者，嫁接小册子的作者
老迈克尔·安布罗西（1862—1933）出身特尔纳瓦地区一个古老的种植者家庭。1875 年父亲去世，他十三岁辍学，接手家族的葡萄园、耕地与牧场；从那时起，他在葡萄园里学这门手艺。1889 年根瘤蚜抵达这一带时，他向萨克森农业协会理事会提交报告，要求设立一个葡萄委员会；委员会成立，他被任命为主席。自 1892 年起，他与弗里德里希·卡斯帕里共事十年，举办课程与实操，1901 年起在协会理事会中代表萨克森种植者。他在梅迪亚什有 20 公顷，种葡萄藤与美洲杂交藤苗；在克勒丘内尔有 70 公顷，那片土地在国有化之后成为布拉日研究站的基础。他写过关于嫁接的小册子，其中有《一种新的嫁接法》（1910 年，1928 年修订）。
Portrait苗圃经营者，阿尤德与布夫泰亚的经理，《Der praktische Weinbauer》的作者，梅迪亚什市长
小迈克尔·安布罗西（1880—1940）先后就读梅迪亚什农业学校（1894—1897）、沙尔瓦尔乳品学校（1897—1898），1903 年毕业于布达福克葡萄栽培学院。1902 年，他主导了买下阿尤德产业之事，该产业 1905 年得名「Ambrosi, Fischer & Co.」，他从 1912 年起执掌；1906 年出版《Der praktische Weinbauer》，共三版，1913 年在克拉约瓦出了罗马尼亚文版。自 1907 年起，他任布夫泰亚 Știrbey 亲王苗圃的合伙人兼经理，那里有 40 公顷插条、12 公顷嫁接藤苗学校，每年 800—1000 万株藤苗。1919 年他接手格雷芬贝格葡萄园，1924 年迁居梅迪亚什，1920 年代完成了那些无性系选育——皇家费特亚斯卡之名很可能即由此而来。1933 年起任梅迪亚什市长。
Portrait律师，葡萄种植者，梅迪亚什福音教会堂务委员
阿尔弗雷德·安布罗西博士（1895—1974）毕业于斯特凡·路德维希·罗特中学，随后在第一次世界大战中作为炮兵上了前线。负伤并中毒气之后，他在克卢日—纳波卡攻读法律，1921 年取得博士学位；此后又在柏林农业大学与商学院深造葡萄栽培知识。他为汉堡的胡戈·施廷内斯工作过几年，之后又为同一位雇主在国内效力。1927 年他接手克勒丘内尔的产业，在那里以最现代的方法栽培葡萄，并因葡萄酒品类与酒窖经营而知名。藤苗出口为他赢得国际声誉，尤其是「Ambrosi-special」选系，以及在葡萄栽培大会上的展示。1942 年他成为梅迪亚什福音教会的堂务委员，直至移居德国。1974 年卒于慕尼黑；他为特兰西瓦尼亚葡萄酒做的广告出现在 1967、1971 和 1972 年的德国报刊上。
Portrait黑森州立葡萄园总监——埃伯巴赫修道院；葡萄酒作家
汉斯·安布罗西（1925—2012）1942 年在锡比乌布鲁肯塔尔中学通过毕业考试，随即被征入伍，派往俄军前线。战后他于 1947 年永久迁往德国，1948 至 1951 年在斯图加特—霍恩海姆攻读农学，两年后取得博士学位。他先后在盖森海姆的嫁接葡萄藤研究所工作，随后任斯图加特—霍恩海姆果树学研究所助理。1954 年他前往南非，主持斯泰伦博斯大学葡萄栽培系，并创建了 Nietvoorbij 研究所。1966 年起，他任黑森州立葡萄园总监，驻埃伯巴赫修道院，修复了修道院，并创办了莱茵高音乐节。1990 年退休，出版六十多本书；2001 年获特兰西瓦尼亚萨克森人文化奖。
Portrait重植欧洲的先驱，安布罗西家族的合作伙伴，防治根瘤蚜的国家专员
弗里德里希·卡斯帕里（1858—1935）是与老迈克尔·安布罗西并列的另一位重植欧洲的先驱。他在维也纳近郊的克洛斯特新堡葡萄栽培学校受训，1892 年回到特兰西瓦尼亚，被任命为防治根瘤蚜的国家专员。同年，他开始与老迈克尔·安布罗西合作，十年间共同举办众多课程与实操。家族纪念册描述了势力范围的分野：卡斯帕里主要向西工作——特兰西瓦尼亚、匈牙利、奥地利、德国、列支敦士登、俄国——并在瓦拉希亚做过一些事，任德勒格沙尼 Știrbey 亲王苗圃的经理，在布加勒斯特近郊的若伊察有一座苗圃。安布罗西则向东与向南，后来还越过大洋。此处所用的生卒年并不见于家族纪念册。
Portrait亲王，德勒格沙尼与布夫泰亚苗圃的主人
在安布罗西家族的资料里，巴尔布·Știrbey 以亲王以及德勒格沙尼和布夫泰亚苗圃主人的身份出现。小迈克尔·安布罗西 1904 年在布夫泰亚为他种下一片十公顷的果园，1909 年扩至 50 公顷，并照管 30 公顷杏与李；自 1907 年起，他任亲王苗圃的合伙人兼经理。同样在布夫泰亚，还有 40 公顷插条葡萄园和 12 公顷嫁接藤苗学校，配一套每天约三百万升的灌溉系统，雇工则在阿尤德受过专门训练。
Portrait阿尤德「Ambrosi, Fischer & Co.」公司的合伙人
关于约瑟夫·菲舍尔，本卷宗的资料几乎没有留下什么：没有日期，没有肖像，没有信件。他的名字活了下来，留在阿尔巴县阿尤德的「Ambrosi, Fischer & Co.」公司里；这家公司 1936 年秋季的目录（九月于阿尤德印行）只在信头上提到他，旁边是电报地址「Ambrosi-Fischer Aiud」、电话 22 和邮政储蓄账户 43.026。公司自称是罗马尼亚苗圃经营者总会的成员，并注明已存在「三十五年有余」，这意味着其开端在 1901 年之前。1936—1937 年的目录列出结果果树、玫瑰、美洲砧木与嫁接葡萄藤，其中有皇家费特亚斯卡。就这些：一个公司名、一座苗圃、一份目录。
Portrait