"The British East India Company as a “Hydra Brand”: The Case of Madeira Wine"

In 1756 Port wine was only the third product, after Chianti and Tokaji, to receive certification and a denomination of origin, an important endorsement and protective measure that helped to create the product’s reputation in an era of rampant adulteration, imitation and fraud. Yet Portugal’s other great fortified wine, Madeira, produced on the eponymous archipelago off the coast of Africa, was not protected until the late twentieth century. Why? This paper, based on a wide range of archival and print sources from Portugal and Britain, suggests a possible answer. An oligopoly of British merchants controlled the trade in Madeira and resisted the Portuguese crown’s attempt to protect the wine. We argue that the East India Company, with a long connection to Madeira, which was once occupied by Britain, acted as an alternative to certification, by directly branding and indirectly endorsing Madeira wine for sale on the increasingly important Asian market. A multifaceted endorser with interests in a wide range of products and commodities, the East India Company acted as what we call a “Hydra Brand”. Using a mythological metaphor, we suggest that the Company rivalled the power of the state as certifier and endorser just as the Hydra of Greek myth, for a time, rivalled Hercules. The East India Company’s “brand”—understood in expansive terms—came to be applied in many ways, by the Company itself and by other merchants, helping to build a global beverage brand without certification and denomination of original protections, a brand that remains alive to this day in the marketing imaginary surrounding Madeira wine.