Jean-Christophe Boze grew up along the Mediterranean Sea in Montpelier, France, and dreamed of becoming a soccer player or a geologist. Living in the midst of wine country, he visited his grandfather’s vineyard every year and helped harvest and stomp the grapes, which were then made into wine.

“It’s a beautiful city,” he said. “I’m a pure Mediterranean man.”

At 37, he has since combined his interests in food, wine, music, the arts, teaching, geography, English and the United States into a career in intellectual-property law that has benefited grape growers and vintners in Iowa and throughout the country.

“People don’t necessarily associate the Midwest with winemaking,” said Boze. But he hopes his work this year as the Lorvellec Visiting International Food Law Scholar at Drake University Law School can address that issue, promoting geographical wine designations, such as Napa Valley, within the state and elsewhere that can establish credibility for groups of grape growers and vintners.

As a Frenchman, Boze has embraced his country’s culture, including a love of food and wine. He speaks French, English, Italian and some Swahili and plays the guitar. His career has taken him throughout the world, though he now calls Brussels, Belgium, home, where lives with his son, Calixte, 5, and his wife, Charlotte, a university professor of geography.

He was lured into teaching by promises of decent wages and four months of vacation. He studied English literature and taught French in England for several years, but that career lost its luster. He went to law school at the University of Paris II, one of the most prestigious schools in the country, and returned to Montpelier to earn a post-doctoral degree in intellectual-property law, driven in part by his interest in music and copyright laws.

“I thought there was a bit of prestige, and then from a practical point of view I thought it was an area that was picking up, especially on the international level,” Boze said. “In France, we have a very strong set of laws for copyrights – very old and very protective.”

He continued his travels, working four years for a law firm in the Comoro Islands, where he immersed himself in the Muslim culture and dedicated a great deal of time to Quranic law. He later worked for a short time at a Canadian law firm.

Stemming from his work in intellectual property law, Boze began work toward a Ph.D. on the United States’ geographical wine appellations, known as American viticultural areas (AVAs) which refer to geographical names, such as Napa Valley that are used to designate wines, food and agricultural products.

“It’s a marketing tool that’s used more and more in the U.S.,” Boze said. “There are now more than 150 AVAs in the country, and a lot that are pending. That goes with a growing interest in wines in the U.S. as well. That wasn’t so much the case 30 years ago.”

In addition to teaching a class at the Drake University Law School on geographic indicators and serving as a guest lecturer in other courses, Boze has traveled to parts of Iowa and the United States to speak on the benefits gained grape growers and vintners can gain in establishing AVAs. One stop on his journey was to Maquoketa, where he met with the Mississippi Valley Grape Growers Association, a group that is working toward becoming the first registered AVA in Iowa.

In order to become an AVA – and have the mark of distinction on bottles of wine produced in that region – the group must first prove that 85 percent of the grapes used to make its wines are grown in the region. It also must complete a registration process with the federal government, and include a description of the area to prove it is coherent geographically and that it stands out from the surrounding areas.

The history of AVAs in the United States dates back to 1978, which makes it a newcomer compared with the French system, which was created in 1935 and now includes hundreds of geographic appellations. “We’ve got a very old and strong tradition of protecting these names in France,” Boze said.

Though people most often associate American wines with California or New York, Boze said the Midwest has been prominent in the wine industry. In the late 19th century, nearly every European vineyard was destroyed by a disease, and 80 percent of the grapevine cuttings that were used to restore the vineyards came from Missouri. Additionally, a Missouri AVA was the first registered in the United States.

“It’s not so much, ‘Is this wine country or not?’” he said. “There is a potential, but the wine has to be made with different varietals that are adapted to the climate and geographical features of the area.”

Boze, who plans to stay in the United States through the summer, is writing a reference book about wine labeling for U.S. wine professionals, and has been invited to teach another two-week class on geographic wine labeling at Drake next year. He hopes to work for the European Commission as an expert in the areas of agricultural law and food law upon returning to Brussels, and looks forward to reuniting with his family.

“In the past, I have traveled with my family, so it’s been hard,” Boze said. “But it’s been less hard because of the way people have welcomed me and made me feel at home. I’ve traveled a lot and I’ve never seen it anywhere.”