Draft:Jim Held

• Comment: Hey, MinorRiverDeity! Can you fill in the citations I've marked as needed? Alternatively you can remove that information from the article. Valereee (talk) 13:26, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

• Comment: Although this person is now dead, the article has a very positive tone that does not fit an encyclopaedic article. JML1148 (talk | contribs) 10:44, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

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Leon James "Jim" Held (1933–2019) was an American vintner and businessman who played a central role in the post-Prohibition revival of winemaking in the Midwest and Eastern United States. Along with his wife Betty, he co-founded Stone Hill Winery in Hermann, Missouri, in 1965, becoming the first commercial vintners in the state’s modern era and helping to reestablish a regional wine industry after a 45-year hiatus.

Early Years

Held was born in Pershing, Missouri, and served in the United States Navy as an engineer. After his military service, he and his wife farmed in Osage County within the Missouri Rhineland, raising livestock and maintaining a 4.5-acre vineyard of Catawba grapes. In 1965, the couple purchased and rehabilitated the historic Stone Hill Winery, which reestablished Missouri's wine industry after Prohibition. That same year, they discovered what was believed to be the last surviving Norton grapevines, a historically important Pre-Prohibition American wine grape on a local homestead, and returned the variety to commercial production.

Stone Hill Winery and Industry Development

The Hermann region had been a major center of American winemaking in the nineteenth century, with Stone Hill Winery originally established in 1847. By the late 1800s, the winery was the second-largest in the United States and exported wine globally, where it earned medals at international exhibitions in Vienna, Philadelphia, and Paris. Missouri’s wine industry collapsed following Prohibition in 1920, and the state’s vineyards were forcibly removed. When Held reopened Stone Hill Winery in 1965, it marked the first large-scale commercial wine production in Missouri since the repeal of Prohibition, reviving a historic winemaking tradition that had been dormant for more than four decades.

During the late 1960s and 1970s, Stone Hill Winery became one of the largest wine producers in the Midwest and a model for other Midwestern operations. At the time, state law limited wineries to 5,000 gallons of annual production. Held worked with legislators to raise those limits, first to 75,000 gallons in 1968 and later to 500,000 gallons in 1980. By that point Stone Hill had become the state’s largest winery and grape grower.

In 1979 Held hired winemaker Dave Johnson, and together along with Held's children, they made improvements in native and hybrid grape wine production. Under their direction, Stone Hill received numerous awards at national and international competitions and helped demonstrate the commercial potential of grapes such as Norton and Vidal Blanc. In 1993, noted wine writer Gerald Asher would say that their Norton "might yet do for Missouri what Cabernet Sauvignon has done for California."

Held was also involved in the creation of the Hermann American Viticultural Area (AVA) in 1983, one of the first federally recognized AVA's. The designation helped formalize regional identity and inspired similar efforts throughout the central and eastern United States.

Recognitions and Later Life

In 1982, Held was named Missouri Small Business Person of the Year and recognized by President Ronald Reagan during a White House ceremony. He and Betty Held were the first inductees into the Missouri Tourism Hall of Fame in 1988 and named the Wine Growing Family of the Year by the Wineries Unlimited Conference in 1995. In 2014, the University of Missouri gave Held an Honorary Doctorate of Laws for revitalizing Missouri's wine industry.

Held retired from Stone Hill Winery in 2011, and operations passed to his son Jonathan Held and the third generation of the family. Held died in 2019 at the age of 86.

Legacy

Held’s work is widely recognized as laying the foundation for the modern wine industry in Missouri and the broader Midwest. Through his advocacy for native and hybrid grape varieties, leadership in expanding state production limits, and early adoption of professional winemaking standards, he helped transform the region into a sustainable wine-growing area within the national industry.