Photos: Sonoma County vintner Kanaye Nagasawa’s legendary life

Before Kanaye Nagasawa made his mark in Santa Rosa, his life was already extraordinary.

When he was 13 years old in 1865, he was smuggled out of his home country of Japan — then a more isolated country — along with a group of 14 other Satsuma students to live in the U.K. and learn Western culture.

His real name was Isonaga Hikosuke, but when he left he was renamed Kanaye Nagasawa to protect his family. At the time, it was illegal for Japanese citizens to travel out of the country.

Coming from a high-ranking samurai family, studying in Scotland was a big transition, but Nagasawa excelled in school and mastered English.

He became one of the first Japanese immigrants in the United States about two years later, in 1867, when he joined an Englishman named Thomas Lake Harris of the Brotherhood of the New Life religious group and moved to New York. Nagasawa then attended Cornell University for a year in 1870.

The Brotherhood of the New Life, also referred to as a cult, received income from winemaking, which led them to move to Santa Rosa in 1875 when Nagasawa was 23.

They settled on a 1,000-acre property north of Santa Rosa and named the area Fountaingrove, where the Fountain Grove Winery and their Utopian colony was established.

Nagasawa stayed here for the rest of his life and became a local legend. He spoke with a Scottish accent. He made friends with community leaders and hosted parties. He was left in charge of the estate and winery — Harris left Fountaingrove in 1892 and died in 1906 — and under Nagasawa’s leadership it became one of the state's largest wineries at the time.

In 1899, Nagasawa commissioned the Fountaingrove Round Barn to be built. The Fountaingrove Round Barn was a local landmark until it was destroyed in the 2017 Tubbs Fire.

Nagasawa died in 1934. For more information on Nagasawa’s life, check out “The Wonder Seekers of Fountaingrove” by renowned columnist Gaye LeBaron and Bart Casey.

See the gallery above for photos of the trailblazing life of Kanaye Nagasawa.