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“Deceptions Have Been Practiced”: Food Standards as Intellectual Property in the Missouri and Ohio Wine Industries (1906–1920)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2020

ANDREW VENTIMIGLIA
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Abstract

This article explores early twentieth-century debates about wine regulation in order to understand how emerging food standards could be mobilized in order to produce and protect value around particular geographical locales. Ohio and Missouri winemakers sought to protect their practices of “amelioration,” or the addition of sugar and water to acidic or foxy wines, by establishing the regulatory designation of “Ohio and Missouri Wine” as separate from “Wine.” In doing so, they turned food standards into a form of intellectual property mobilized to protect their practices and enhance the market value of Ohio and Missouri wines. Conversely, they argued that “universal” wine standards were unduly preferential to California wines. This compelling yet forgotten historical episode inverts the rationale behind geographical indications (a form of intellectual property designed to protect the intrinsic benefits of place) producing a unique argument for geographical protections based not on value but on lack.

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Article
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Enterprise & Society , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 502 - 537
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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References

Bibliography of Works Cited

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Swanson, Kara. “Food and Drug Law as Intellectual Property Law.” Wisconsin Law Review, 2011, 331–397.Google Scholar
Wood, Donna J. “The Strategic Use of Public Policy: Business Support for the 1906 Food and Drug Act.” Business History Review 59, no. 3 (Autumn 1985): 403–432.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Belz, Adam. “As Regulators Ponder Food Labels, Dairy Farmers Press Harder Against Nut Milk,” Minneapolis Star Tribune (February 18, 2019).Google Scholar
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Stiles, Nancy. “How the Missouri Wine Industry First Took Root,” in Feast Magazine (April 28, 2017).Google Scholar
Strey, Gerry. “The ‘Oleo Wars:’ Wisconsin’s Fight over the Demon Spread,” Wisconsin Magazine of History (Autumn 2001): 3–15.Google Scholar
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United States Congress. An Act Making Appropriations for the Department of Agriculture for the Fiscal Year Ending June Thirtieth, Nineteen Hundred and Four. March 3, 1903.Google Scholar
United States Congress. An Act to Increase the Revenue, and for Other Purposes. The Statutes at Large of the United States of America from December, 1916 to March, 1917, 39, Part 1 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1917).Google Scholar
United States Department of Agriculture. Circular No. 13: Standards of Purity for Food Products. 1904.Google Scholar
United States Department of Agriculture. Circular No. 19: Standards of Purity for Food Products. 1906.Google Scholar
United States Department of Agriculture. Food Inspection Decision 109: The Labeling of Wines. August 24, 1909.Google Scholar
United States Department of Agriculture. Food Inspection Decision 120: The Labeling of Ohio and Missouri Wines. May 20, 1920.Google Scholar
United States Department of Agriculture. Food Inspection Decision 156: Wine. June 24, 1914.Google Scholar
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Geographical Indication Protection in the United States. https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/web/offices/dcom/olia/globalip/pdf/gi_system.pdf. Last accessed June 7, 2018.Google Scholar
Brown, Todd. “A History of the Weinbau in the Lower Missouri Valley: From Dutzow to Hermann.” MA thesis, University of Missouri-St. Loui,. 2011. UMI 1495032.Google Scholar
Poletti, Peter Joseph. “An Interdisciplinary Study of the Missouri Grape and Wine Industry, 1650 to 1989.” PhD diss., Saint Louis University, 1989.Google Scholar
Food and Drug Administration Collection. National Archives. College Park, Maryland.Google Scholar
Black, Rachel E., and Ulin, Robert C., eds. Wine and Culture: Vineyard to Glass. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Busch, Lawrence. Standards: Recipes for Reality. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coppin, Clayton A., and High, Jack. The Politics of Purity: Harvey Washington Wiley and the Origins of Federal Food Policy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Detjen, David W. The Germans in Missouri, 1900–1918: Prohibition, Neutrality, and Assimilation. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Lorine Swainston. The Pure Food, Drink and Drug Crusaders, 1879–1914. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1999.Google Scholar
Guy, Kolleen M. When Champagne Became French: Wine and the Making of a National Identity. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 2003.Google Scholar
Hannickel, Erica. Empire of Vines: Wine Culture in America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Higgins, David M. Brands, Geographical Origin, and the Global Economy: A History from the Nineteenth Century to the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Husmann, George. The Cultivation of the Native Grape and Manufacture of American Wines. New York: F.W. Woodward, 1868.Google Scholar
Lukacs, Paul. American Vintage: The Rise of American Wine. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.Google Scholar
Matthews, Mark A. Terroir and 1Other Myths of Winegrowing. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Mendelson, Richard P. Wine Law in America: Law and Policy. New York: Wolters Klewer Law and Business, 2011.Google Scholar
Okrent, Daniel. Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. New York: Scribner, 2010.Google Scholar
Pinney, Thomas. A History of Wine in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Pinney, Thomas. The Makers of American Wine: A Record of Two Hundred Years. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Robertson, Carol. The Little Red Book of Wine Law: A Case of Legal Issues. Chicago: ABA Publishing, 2008.Google Scholar
Smith-Howard, Kendra. Pure and Modern Milk: An Environmental History Since 1900. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Strasser, Susan. Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market. New York: Pantheon Books, 1989.Google Scholar
Trubek, Amy. A Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Young, James Harvey. Pure Food: Securing the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byszewski, Elaine T. “What’s in the Wine? A History of the FDA’s Role.” Food and Drug Law Journal 545 (2002): 552–553.Google Scholar
Cooke, Kathy J. “‘Who Wants White Carrots?’: Congressional Seed Distribution, 1862 to 1923.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17 (2018): 475–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deelstra, H., Burns, D. Thorbun, and Walker, M. J.. “The Adulteration of Food, Lessons from the Past, with Reference to Butter, Margarine, and Fraud.” European Food Research and Technology 239 (2014): 725–744.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duguid, Paul. “Developing the Brand: The Case of Alcohol, 1800–1880.” Enterprise & Society 4, no. 3 (September 2003): 405–441.Google Scholar
Duguid, Paul. “Information in the Mark and the Marketplace: A Multivocal Account.” Enterprise & Society 15, no. 1 (March 2014): 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dupré, Ruth. “‘If It’s Yellow, It Must Be Butter’: Margarine Regulation in North America Since 1885.” Journal of Economic History 59, no. 2 (June 1999): 353–371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freidberg, Susanne E. “The Triumph of the Egg.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 50, no. 2 (2008): 400–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gangjee, Dev. “Melton Mowbray and the GI Pie in the Sky: Exploring Cartographies of Protection.” Intellectual Property Quarterly 3 (Summer 2006): 291–309.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Kevin D. “Acidity and Power: The Politics of Natural Wine in Nineteenth-Century Germany.” Food and Foodways 19, no. 4 (2011): 294–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gough, J. B. “Winecraft and Chemistry in 18th-Century France: Chaptal and the Invention of Chaptalization.” Technology and Culture 39, no. 1 (January 1998): 74–104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hughes, Justin. “Champagne, Feta, and Bourbon: The Spirited Debate about Geographical Indications.” Hastings Law Journal 58 (2006): 299–386.Google Scholar
Parry, Bronwyn. “Geographical Indications: Not All ‘Champagne and Roses.’” In Trade Marks and Brands: An Interdisciplinary Critique, edited by Bently, Lionel, Davis, Jennifer, and Ginsburg, Jane C., 361–380. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pickavance, Jason. “Gastronomic Realism: Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, the Fight for Pure Food, and the Magic of Mastication.” Food and Foodways 11, no. 2–3 (2003): 87–112.Google Scholar
“The Plastering of Wines.” Science 12, no. 290 (August 24, 1888): 89.Google Scholar
Renner, G. K. “Prohibition Comes to Missouri, 1910–1919.” Missouri Historical Review 62, no. 4 (July 1968): 363–397.Google Scholar
Rosen, Zvi S. “Reimagining Bleistein: Copyright for Advertisements in Historical Perspective.” Journal, Copyright Society of the U.S.A. 59, no. 2 (Winter 2012): 347–389.Google Scholar
Stanziani, Alessandro. “Information, Quality and Legal Rules: Wine Adulteration in Nineteenth Century France.” Business History 51, no. 2 (March 2009): 268–291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swanson, Kara. “Food and Drug Law as Intellectual Property Law.” Wisconsin Law Review, 2011, 331–397.Google Scholar
Wood, Donna J. “The Strategic Use of Public Policy: Business Support for the 1906 Food and Drug Act.” Business History Review 59, no. 3 (Autumn 1985): 403–432.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Belz, Adam. “As Regulators Ponder Food Labels, Dairy Farmers Press Harder Against Nut Milk,” Minneapolis Star Tribune (February 18, 2019).Google Scholar
Dufur, Brett. “The History of Missouri Wine,” Missouri Wine Country. http://www.missouriwinecountry.com/articles/history. Last accessed July 16, 2018.Google Scholar
Stiles, Nancy. “How the Missouri Wine Industry First Took Root,” in Feast Magazine (April 28, 2017).Google Scholar
Strey, Gerry. “The ‘Oleo Wars:’ Wisconsin’s Fight over the Demon Spread,” Wisconsin Magazine of History (Autumn 2001): 3–15.Google Scholar
Suval, John. “(Not) Like Butter: W.D. Hoard and the Crusade Against the ‘Oleo Fraud,’” Wisconsin Magazine of History (Autumn 2012): 17–27.Google Scholar
Alwood, William B. Bureau of Chemistry–Bulletin No. 145. Enological Studies: The Chemical Composition of American Grapes Grown in Ohio, New York, and Virginia. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1911.Google Scholar
Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Finance, United States Senate, Sixty-Fourth Congress First Session on H.R. 16763, An Act to Increase the Revenue, and for Other Purposes. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1916.Google Scholar
United States Bureau of Chemistry. Decision 3271. Adulteration and misbranding of wines. U.S. v. Sweet Valley Wine Co. Plea of nolo contendere. Fine, $1,500 and costs. Service and Regulatory Announcements (June 1914): 436–444.Google Scholar
United States Congress. An Act for Preventing the Manufacture, Sale, or Transportation of Adulterated or Misbranded or Poisonous or Deleterious Food, Drugs, Medicines, and Liquors, and for Regulating Traffic therein, and for other Purposes. December 4, 1905.Google Scholar
United States Congress. An Act Making Appropriations for the Department of Agriculture for the Fiscal Year Ending June Thirtieth, Nineteen Hundred and Four. March 3, 1903.Google Scholar
United States Congress. An Act to Increase the Revenue, and for Other Purposes. The Statutes at Large of the United States of America from December, 1916 to March, 1917, 39, Part 1 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1917).Google Scholar
United States Department of Agriculture. Circular No. 13: Standards of Purity for Food Products. 1904.Google Scholar
United States Department of Agriculture. Circular No. 19: Standards of Purity for Food Products. 1906.Google Scholar
United States Department of Agriculture. Food Inspection Decision 109: The Labeling of Wines. August 24, 1909.Google Scholar
United States Department of Agriculture. Food Inspection Decision 120: The Labeling of Ohio and Missouri Wines. May 20, 1920.Google Scholar
United States Department of Agriculture. Food Inspection Decision 156: Wine. June 24, 1914.Google Scholar
United States Patent and Trademark Office. Geographical Indication Protection in the United States. https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/web/offices/dcom/olia/globalip/pdf/gi_system.pdf. Last accessed June 7, 2018.Google Scholar
Brown, Todd. “A History of the Weinbau in the Lower Missouri Valley: From Dutzow to Hermann.” MA thesis, University of Missouri-St. Loui,. 2011. UMI 1495032.Google Scholar
Poletti, Peter Joseph. “An Interdisciplinary Study of the Missouri Grape and Wine Industry, 1650 to 1989.” PhD diss., Saint Louis University, 1989.Google Scholar
Food and Drug Administration Collection. National Archives. College Park, Maryland.Google Scholar