Promoting American Agricultural Products in the European Market

Ambassador Mattie R. Sharpless was born and raised in a rural community near the North Carolina coast. After studies at North Carolina College, she joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service in 1965 and soon found herself in Switzerland supporting negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to break down farm trade restrictions. She went on to break open European markets for American wine and other agricultural products. She later served as U.S. Ambassador to the Central African Republic.

Some of her colleagues thought she was crazy, but Mattie Sharpless was unafraid to take on the European wine market in the 1980s and 90s. As agricultural attaché in Bern, she started by promoting American grains, including rice, as staples in the Swiss government system that maintains a three month supply of nonperishable foodstuffs on hand at all times as a strategic reserve. She moved on from these essentials to agricultural products for restaurants at luxury Swiss hotels. Sharpless convinced hotel managers to run promotions offering menus of all U.S. products, winning permanent places for high quality American beef and wine on some of the most exclusive tables in the country.

Still, when she became agricultural minister counselor at our embassy in Rome in the late 1980s, the European market remained dominated by Italian and French wines. When Sharpless proposed setting up a pavilion for U.S. wines at Italy’s Verona wine festival, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture compared the idea to “taking coals to Newcastle,” she recalled. But U.S. wine producers were looking for new markets, and Sharpless was undeterred.

The red, white and blue American pavilion in Verona had a huge impact, introducing wines from California, the Pacific Northwest, and even Texas to many European buyers for the first time. In Verona, Sharpless remembered, “it was amazing to see the reaction to the American wine products, although you knew that you were at the door of the Italian wine market. And little by little, American wine began to be sold in the Italian market…We took great pride in that U.S. wine pavilion and how successful it was.”

“It was amazing to see the reaction to the American wine products, although you knew that you were at the door of the Italian wine market.”

Ambassador Mattie Sharpless

Sharpless would go on to become agricultural counselor in Paris and make similar inroads in the French wine market. She hosted wine tasting events at the embassy and at the ambassador’s residence to promote the work of American vintners and got their wines added to the menus of some of the finest restaurants in France. After serving as U.S. Ambassador to the Central African Republic, she would become the Foreign Agricultural Service’s Special Envoy to Emerging Markets, working around the world to expand American agricultural exports by small and medium companies.

“It is through these types of events that U.S. products become better known,” Sharpless said, explaining her promotional events for American wines. “At the same time, these events help to improve French and European Union relations with the United States. These events enable the bilateral officials on both sides to relax a bit more. They then discuss issues in a more amicable manner instead of always having their little toothpicks handy to prick at each other.”

Learn more in Mattie Sharpless’ oral history.