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Decantified: Creativity During Prohibition PDF Print E-mail

and Birth of a Wine Nation

By Jim Ginley
 
Saturday, February 6, 2010 – During Prohibition, drinkers resorted to some extremely creative ways to get their buzzes on.
 
Prohibition also affected the California wine industry in many ways. The Prohibition Act was passed in 1920, but as early as 1880 many states were going dry. Kansas, Iowa, Georgia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia all fell under the spell of the “Drys” who were brainwashing the nation against alcohol, and they even demanded the mention of wine be removed school and college textbooks.
 
When World War I broke out in 1914, 33 states were dry and the momentum carried on through the war and resulted in the Volstead National Prohibition Act of 1920. Some winegrowers gave up and pulled up their vines. However, one little clause in the Volstead Act allowed homeowners to make 200 gallons of non-intoxicating cider and fruit juice each year. California grape growers prospered by supplying home winemakers with fruit; they were eager to make their own “non-intoxicating” ciders and juices.
 
Not all wineries were successful; only about 100 in California and New York, along with dozens in New Jersey, Ohio and Missouri survived the dry laws. During Prohibition they made sacramental wines, medicinal wines, wine tonics and other products. The greatest volume of sacramental wines was sold through rabbis, because the Jewish faith required the use of wine in the home. Millions of people of all faiths, and no faith, joined fake synagogues. Member lists were copied right out phone directories, and then these false Jews were able to consume the wine legally.
 
One idea was to press grape concentrate into the form of a brick, and it was sold along with a yeast pill to start fermentation. A printed warning cautioned home winemakers not to add the pill “because if you do, this will turn into wine, which would be illegal.”
 
Another scheme came from Captain Paul Garrett, and he managed to get the idea financed by President Hoover’s new farm relief bill. The result was a giant merge of California and New York wineries called Fruit Industries, Inc. Garrett figured the bankrupt grape industry could use some relief, so he and some other large wineries received millions in loans from the Federal Farm Board to salvage the grape surplus.
 
The grape concentrate they marketed was called Vine-Glo, a better name evidently than runner-up Merri-Cal. But the Drys saw through this one too and marched on Washington in protest. Vine-Glo soon died on the vine.
 
When Prohibition ended in 1933, the turmoil in the wine industry continued for many years as it tried to rejuvenate itself by offering poorly made wine into a flooded market. Customers turned away from the cheap, undrinkable stuff and looked towards beer and hard liquor to quench their thirst.
 
One segment that did well was dessert wines: port, sherry, tokay and muscatel. They were strengthened with brandy to 20% alcohol and taxed less than liquor, so it was the cheapest intoxicant available. They were also the drinks of choice of the derelicts and winos on the skid rows of the nation during the Depression.
 
An effort by Roosevelt’s administration tried to assist the industry through the Department of Agriculture was doomed as well. Two modern wineries were built in Maryland and Mississippi with crushers, presses, underground vats, and the newest wine yeast cultures were brought from Europe.
 
But when the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee learned of the existence of the huge facilities, he blocked passage of the bill exclaiming, “No Federal money shall go to any fermentation industry!” For the next 30 years grape growers struggled without any help from the Department of Agriculture.
 
In 1880, the University of California, by an act of the state legislature, established a special department to conduct wine research and winemaking. It was called “the fruit product laboratory,” making non-alcoholic grape drinks and grape jellies.
 
When Prohibition came to an end in 1933, two professors quickly switched back to winemaking courses. New programs for wine research, grape breeding, and other modern techniques of wine production resulted in newly minted enologists graduating and moving quickly to the wineries to help rebuild the industry.
 
The modern California wine industry was born.