Letter to the Editors

In his review of my book, Paul Lukacs alleges that I “invent facts,” “distort” the story of American wine, and indulge in nothing more than “wishful thinking.”¹ When I wrote the book, I did not expect accolades from anyone employed by the wine industry. Indeed, some of the chapters carry difficult messages regarding wine culture’s growth in America. But the seriousness of the charges that Lukacs lodges against the book do not carry any weight.

First, notwithstanding his most inflammatory criticism—that I “invent facts to fit . . . [my] own political views” and that my “thesis is as much about American politics as American wine”—Lukacs does not point to a single instance of factual error in the book. If by “political views” he means Empire of Vines’ engagement with the current theory and historical work surrounding nineteenth-century U.S. colonialism and imperialism, as well as what Worster has called Americans’ “empire over nature,” his objection is puzzling.² Study of the “cultures of U.S. imperialism” has a strong presence in academic history, literature, art history, and American studies. Witness the work of such widely respected scholars as Donald Pease, Amy Kaplan, Shelley Streeby, Angela Miller, Frieda Knobloch, Patricia Limerick (current president of the Organization of American Historians), William Cronon, and Douglass Sackman. Given this journal’s interdisciplinary perspective, it is hardly a surprise that Lukacs would approach my book from a background that differs from mine. His review might have been all the richer for it. The difference, however, by no means justifies his eschewal of a proper scholarly tone.

Although the schools of thought that inform our respective books are indeed disparate, Lukacs states, ironically, that Empire of Vines “does not break new ground,” citing, in the review’s second sentence, that he and Thomas Pinney had already covered this material. My book, however, was not intended to be a chronological work of wine history, as theirs was, but an examination of the dominant cultural and artistic narratives that attend the growing and selling of wine. Given this focus, Empire of Vines is the first book to identify the sub-genre of the “vineyard romance,” including analyses of the little-read, wine-related work of such otherwise canonical American authors as James Fennimore Cooper, Charles Chesnutt, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Maria Ruiz de Burton. Additionally, the book analyzes several forms of visual and material grape culture, investigates early locales of wine tourism, and detects startling links between fears about grape hybridity and human miscegenation. The discovery and treatment of archival letters and other family artifacts regarding Nicholas Longworth, the Cincinnati millionaire and grape grower, are also unprecedented in the literature.

Contrary to Lukacs’ accusations, I do acknowledge that “viticulture in nineteenth century America was largely a series of failures” (8–10, 62–93), and that vine diseases devastated wine crops for decades (125, 161–165). Even though wine was hard to grow in the United States, it nevertheless carried explicit bourgeois—and imperial—connotations, which are not mutually exclusive. A commodity can certainly carry two connotations; nineteenth-century wine operated with more than two.

Lukacs’ summary of my argument about winegrowing—“what really happened was simply violent conquest and exploitation”—is an oversimplification. In point of fact, wine growers’ rhetoric and actions, consciously crafted and delivered within a culture of conquest and exploitation, were hardly “simple.” Several other reviewers of Empire of Vines understood my argument as far more complex, and realistic, than Lukacs allows. Readers interested in balanced reviews of my book may want to consult Environmental History, XIX (2014); American Studies LIII (2014); and Choice Reviews, 51, No. 10 (June 2014), among others.