• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 488 0

soon closed down, with the winemakers receiving no compensation. Many of the wineries were simply broken up. The situation was not the same for growers, however, because not only did vineyards continue to be tilled, but the acreage doubled between 1919 and 1926. This curious anomaly can be explained by three loopholes in the law: the “fresh grape deal,” sacramental wine, and medicinal wine. The first arose out of Section 29, which allowed the householder to make “nonintoxicating cider and fruit juices exclusively for use in his home” up to a limit of 200 gallons; because there was no explicit ban, it was interpreted as allowing home winemaking. Thousands of railway carloads of grapes headed east each year at vintage time to meet the demand, which came in particular from immigrant families living all over the country. Leon D. Adams in The Wines of America gives an account of American ingenuity in evading unpopular laws: packages of pressed grapes, called wine bricks, were shipped to these domestic winemakers, along with a yeast pill that the purchaser was advised not to use, “because if you do this, this will turn into wine, which would be illegal.” The premium was on red grapes that could be shipped safely, with the result that plantings of Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir were pulled up and replaced with sturdier, if decidedly inferior, grape varieties such as Alicante Bouschet, Carignan, and Petite Sirah. Vineyards of first-class white wine grapes virtually disappeared during the 1920s. In other words, bad grapes drove out good, as far as winemaking was concerned.

The second loophole was the making of sacramental wine for both Christian and Jewish congregations for use in religious ceremonies. A number of Irish and Italian wineries had close relations with members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and they continued to make wine all through the period. But however many Christian priests and pastors of various sorts there were who required wine for holy communion, their numbers could not match those of rabbis. Again according to Adams, there was a remarkable revival of religious fervor during the 1920s: “The Jewish faith requires the religious use of wine in the home. Anybody could call himself a rabbi and get a permit to buy wine legally, merely by presenting a list of his congregation. Millions of all faiths and no faith became members of fake synagogues, some without their knowledge when the lists were copied from telephone directories.”

The third loophole was medical. It was legal both to make and to sell wine for medicinal purposes, and there was an astonishing increase in illnesses that required treatment with, for example, Paul Masson’s “Medicinal Champagne.” Of course, brandy had been used for medicinal purposes for centuries, so the concept was not wholly alien.

The period of Prohibition saw a sharp increase in criminality, with the term bootlegger, used to refer to someone who smuggles liquor and other alcoholic drinks, coming into wide use. Respect for the law appeared to be collapsing, and increasing numbers of Americans became fearful about the threat to the very nature and fabric of the United States. In the 1932 presidential election, a plank in the Democratic Party’s platform called for the repeal of Prohibition, and with Democratic victory, the forces for repeal triumphed. The Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution repealed the Eighteenth, and from December 6, 1933, Prohibition was no more.

Most of the wineries in California, however, appear to have been caught off guard, and only a very few had stocks of decent wine on hand to sell to a thirsty public. Those that were rapidly reopened were very poorly equipped, with broken and rusty machinery and premises contaminated with disease. The wine made in these situations was, naturally, dire. This did not help sales. Indeed, of the 800 wineries that were reopened or newly established by 1934, only 212 were still in business four years later. Another difficulty with which wineries had to cope was a profound change in the style of wine that the majority