Came during prohibition

I turned 21 in 1999, decades after the Roaring Twenties. Because of this, I can honestly say I don’t know what Ban feels like. I can only compare it to an empty keg at a party or that feeling I got one night in high school when I saw a disgruntled janitor cut up my beloved fake ID. I, like most of us, came of age in an era when wine flowed freely, beer was always available, and every teenager counted down the days until they were 21.

Those born in the early 19th century, however, were not so lucky. In an era marked by a flu pandemic and world war, an era where drinking was not only used for pleasure but also as a much-needed escape from reality, Prohibition entered the picture.

Like an unwanted customer pulling up a stool at the local bar, saloon owners and booze lovers in America took one look at Prohibition and said, “We don’t want anything.” But, it was not the decision of the common man and, while the beer was crying, the whiskey was shaking and the cases of Merlot were getting drunk, Prohibition began on January 16, 1920 when the 18th Amendment took effect, making it illegal to produce, transportation and sale of alcohol.

There were red flags against Prohibition from the start (whatever the KKK fervently advocates is probably not the best idea) and Prohibition, in the end, did little more than increase alcohol consumption and pave the way for organized crime. Fourteen years later, in December 1933, Prohibition was repealed by the 21st Amendment, allowing many Americans to raise their glasses to lawmakers for the first time in more than a decade.

The Volstead Law

During Prohibition, wine was treated a little differently than other types of alcohol, it was as if a bottle of Cabernet had given the government a twenty and was blinking in a way that meant, “shh…keep the cork”. This was due to the Volstead Act. Passed the year before Prohibition began, it gave federal agents the ability to investigate and prosecute anyone caught in violation of Prohibition’s alcoholic beverage laws. However, wines used for sacramental purposes were exempt under this law, allowing the wine to slip through cracks where the beer was too thick to filter.

Due to this act, limited quantities of wine could be made both at home and in cellars. However, those made in warehouses were only available for purchase through government-owned and -supervised warehouses. Wine was also allowed to be purchased only for use in religious ceremonies, particularly mass. However, these rules did not prevent wine drinkers from only using wine for legal purposes: a conceptual “wine opener”, the Volstead Act provided a window of opportunity; drinkers hurried past.

A study done in 1925, during the heart of Prohibition, found that the demand for sacramental wine increased by 800,000 gallons in a two-year period. Perhaps churchgoers legitimately made this demand (Prohibition sparked a religious revival of its own), but it is far more likely that people bought sacramental wine for other uses. Just like the old saying there are no atheists in a foxholethere are no atheists in Prohibition when religious wines are legal.

The wineries

Even though Prohibition increased wine consumption by nearly 100 percent, as is often the case with making anything illegal, many wineries were forced to close their doors. For those who did not make sacramental wines, it was difficult to circumvent the law and the grapes of wrath were established as at no other time in history. Because of this, prohibition drastically changed the grape industry, putting grapes everywhere out of work. Wineries that survived this era did so in part by transforming their grapes from grapes for winemaking to grapes that served non-alcoholic purposes, such as Concord grapes used to make grapes, grape juice, and jam.

The California grape industry, in particular, was saved by the Volstead Act, which allowed home-fermented fruit juices to be produced, giving wineries a reason to stay open. While this was intended to save the vinegar industry for American farmers, it also gave California wineries a way to break the rules of Prohibition. Cellar keepers began producing a grape jelly called “Vine-go,” a jelly that, with the addition of water, would ferment into a strong wine in about two months.

the wine itself

As Prohibition spread across the nation, and people everywhere began making beer, whiskey, and wine at home, the quality of liquor suffered greatly. Newbies to brewing and blending were suddenly forced to become experts. While some people made liquor that was so strong that it left people permanently blind or paralyzed, wine was not that dangerous.

While wine did not take away a person’s ability to walk or the ability to see, it did take away some people’s ability to truly appreciate fine wine. This was because, during this era, fine wine was not so great after all.

Having built an elegant reputation dating back to biblical times, Prohibition made wine a little less sophisticated and a little more spontaneous. While it was once produced by people renowned for their knowledge of winemaking, wine during Prohibition was often made by people who knew nothing about wine other than that they wanted to drink it. This naturally resulted in inferior tasting wines: after all, it was not the taste that many home winemakers were after.

As Prohibition drew to a close, the wineries that had stored wine for the previous fourteen years were able to quench the thirst of a parched part of the nation. However, since so many wineries had closed and others had converted from wine grapes to other types of grapes, it took years for the wine industry to recover. During this recovery time, lower quality wines were continually being made, making it difficult to plant more vineyards.

For a time after Prohibition, it seemed like the wine industry was going down the drain. But, as wineries began to transform back into wine-making grape growers, wine quality was eventually restored. Within a few years, the wine industry was on the up and Americans were savoring every glass, probably now more than ever.