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It was 1989 when Peter Botham began his romantic life in wine, except it took several years for the wine to appear, and a few years, too, for him to find romance.

Don’t worry, though — it all ends happily.

The enduring image of those first years after Botham planted vines on his family’s cattle farm just south of Barneveld is of a man standing alone in a field, wondering at low moments what he got himself into.

“It was a little daunting,” Botham, 57, said this week.

He cleared stumps and rocks, pounded stakes, strung wire, and presumably had plenty of time to consider the example of Count Agoston Haraszthy. The Hungarian nobleman grew grapes on a hillside west of Prairie du Sac in the 1840s. Soon, weary of the harsh winters, Haraszthy moved west, where he is credited with founding the California wine industry before being eaten by alligators in Nicaragua.

A century and a half later, Botham was determined to make a go of it in Wisconsin. He made a friend of Philippe Coquard, the winemaker at Wollersheim Wines, located on the site abandoned by the Hungarian count. In 1993, Coquard said of Botham, “He works very hard. He’s picking up quickly.”