Wine and Prohibition in the United States was a sad time for the industry and our wine history. Prohibition was from 1920 to 1933 and it was a constitutional ban which meant people voted this into law. In fact, people felt tricked into a “YES” vote, they were led to believe wine and beer would still be allowed. It wasn’t! Prohibition was a ban on the production, importation, and transportation of any type of alcoholic beverage including Beer, Wine, and Whiskey which in time also included MoonShine!
Stocking up!
Thank goodness people are creative in the USA! The fact that people knew the law was going to go into effect they started stocking up on wine! The public bought a total of 141 million bottles of wine in a 3-month period.
Wine and Prohibition – Vineyards Survived
Wine and Prohibition led to many vineyards being ripped out of the ground! The Legacy of these vines will be gone forever. We will never get them back! Who could believe they would do this to the vineyards? The greatest news is people found loopholes in the law that allowed some vineyards to stay open and produce grapes and wine. Wine and Prohibition unusual outcomes!
Wine Making at Home
The fact of the matter is this would be a great hobby! A “Wine Brick” is what people used to make wine at home. The picture on the right has the recipe right on the advertisement. So very clever! You could legally produce 200 gallons of wine for personal consumption in a 1-year time frame. Oh, yeah!
Sacramental Wine
Catholic services allowed a few wineries to stay open. This was the sole purpose of production and sales. Love those Catholics! Law enforcement caught on pretty quickly to this one and started revoking the permits the wineries had.
Surviving Vineyards
Wineries that survived prohibition and who have historic stories to tell us all! I believe the below list is of California wineries.
- Beaulieu Vineyards – known as BV
- Pope Valley Winery
- Concannon Winery
- Beringer Winery
- Louis M. Martini
- San Antonio Winery (Los Angeles)
- Bernardo Winery (San Diego)
Farmers Replanting the fields
Many of the farmers replanted the fields with peach, cherry, prune, and pear trees. You can always make a fruit wine and keep it a secret! Some farmers also did keep a few acres of vines if they could get away with it. The phones these days were mostly party lines so the farmers came up with code words for the wines. An example: Zinfindel’s code word was Black Chicken, I would never have guessed!
Wine and Prohibition
In conclusion, I am very happy to be living in this time and not during prohibition! I love my wines and would not want to give them up! Learn more about my love of wine here.
Check out some other interesting facts about wine corks or wine etiquette on these pages.
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