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SweeTango is the brand name of the cultivated apple Minneiska, a hybrid between the Honeycrisp and the Zestar apple apples belonging to the University of Minnesota. The apple is controlled and regulated for marketing, allowing only exclusive territories for growing. It has a sweet-tart taste that some food writers have described as something between brown sugar and spiced apple cider.
University of Minnesota awarded Pepin Heights Orchards exclusive marketing rights to grow and sell the 'Minneiska' apple. They then in turn developed a cooperative of certain selected farm growers and sold rights to these members to produce the apple. It was exclusive at first to the state of Minnesota and later membership was expanded to certain qualifying farmers, mostly to growers of the northern parts of the United States. The concept of exclusive control of a variety of fruit was then a novelty in the United States, leading to lawsuits, which were later dismissed.
The name is a registered trademark owned by University of Minnesota. In 2000, the new apple variety was known during development by the identifier MN 1914. It was created by University of Minnesota's plant development program at their Horticultural Research Center.
The cooperative later branched out and allowed members from Michigan, Washington, New York and a few other northern states. By 2010, this cooperative included farmers from Quebec and Nova Scotia, Canada. The apple could not be grown by non-members. Members, who pay royalties for a license on producing the 'Minneiska' trees, can sell the apple only through the cooperative. The practice, called "managed variety" for high quality standards, was a new concept to the United States when the apple was developed.
The practice implementation has attracted criticism due to its development through a public research institution. In 2010, a lawsuit was filed challenging the legality of University of Minnesota selling exclusive rights to the new variety. However, the Fourth Judicial District Court of Minnesota ruled in 2012 that, "Minnesota’s antitrust and monopoly laws do not apply to its land-grant university." The SweeTango is one of the first commercially available apple varieties to have been trademarked.
In 2008, the variety was patented by the university, the same year its patent for the Honeycrisp expired in the United States.
Genetics
The trademark belongs to University of Minnesota for its apple fruit of the Minneiska cultivar. The patent number was obtained on May 13, 2008, by research scientist breeders David S. Bedford and James J. Luby. The varietal denomination Minneiska has a Latin name of Malus domestica and its patent says in part that it was an exclusive new cultivar that was developed using grafting techniques.
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