Winemaking in the United States During Prohibition

For thirteen years, it was illegal to make or sell wine in the United States. Prohibition should have been the death of American wine — and it very nearly was. Yet through a handful of ingenious loopholes, from altar wine to “grape bricks,” the vine survived the dry years, even as the industry around it collapsed¹.

The dry years begin

When national Prohibition took effect in January 1920 under the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, America’s young wine industry was gutted almost overnight. Before Prohibition there were well over two thousand commercial wineries; by the time it ended, fewer than a hundred were still standing¹. Cellars fell silent, and there would be no compensation for the ruin.

Over 2,500 American wineries — fewer than a hundred survived.— Prohibition, 1920–1933¹

The sacred loophole

The law left doors ajar. Wine for religious sacraments remained legal, and a fortunate few wineries stayed alive by making altar wine for churches — California’s Beaulieu Vineyard styled itself “The House of Altar Wines,” shipping its barrels marked “FLOUR.” Demand for sacramental wine soared — California grape production for it reportedly rose seven-fold². Wine could also be prescribed as medicine and sold, quite legally, through pharmacies.

The wine brick

The strangest loophole of all concerned the home. The Volstead Act let each household make up to 200 gallons a year of “non-intoxicating” fruit juice — widely read as a licence to make wine at home. Demand for grapes exploded, prices soared, and California’s vineyards nearly doubled in acreage during the 1920s³. Enterprising firms sold blocks of concentrated grape juice — “wine bricks” and the famous Vine-Glo — complete with a tongue-in-cheek “warning” that was really a recipe: do not dissolve this in water, add yeast and leave it 21 days in a dark place, or it will ferment into wine⁴.

The grape that Prohibition made

This home-winemaking boom reshaped the vineyards for the worse. To survive the long rail journey to home winemakers in Chicago and New York, grapes had to be thick-skinned, so growers tore out fine, thin-skinned varieties like Cabernet in favour of tough, deeply coloured shippers — above all Alicante Bouschet⁵. The result was a paradox: more grapes than ever, but wine of ever-poorer quality, and a catastrophic loss of the knowledge and vines that make fine wine.

Repeal, and the long hangover

Repeal came at last on 5 December 1933, but it was no happy ending. The Great Depression was at its worst, the finest vineyards had been grubbed up, and skilled winemakers had scattered⁶. American wine emerged from Prohibition alive but crippled, and it would take decades — not until the 1960s and ’70s — before the country’s wine truly recovered. The vine had survived the dry years; the art of fine wine had to be rebuilt almost from scratch.

Frequently asked questions

Read more

• The temperance movement that led to Prohibition
• Beringer, which survived the dry years
• How Prohibition hit Napa Valley

References

1. VinePair — Wine 101: American Wine History, Part III. ↑
2. Aleteia — How Sacred Wine Helped California’s Vineyards During Prohibition. ↑
3. Wine History Project of San Luis Obispo County — What To Do With All Those Wine Grapes During Prohibition? ↑
4. Smithsonian Magazine — During Prohibition, Vintners Sold “Wine Bricks” Rather Than Wine. ↑
5. IWFS — Alicante Bouschet: Prohibition’s Great Grape. ↑
6. Smithsonian National Museum of American History — Grape Gluts and Mother Clones: Prohibition and American Wine. ↑

Recommended reading

Vintage: The Story of Wine

Hugh Johnson

Places Prohibition’s devastation within the long story of American and world wine.

A Short History of Wine

Rod Phillips

Excellent on Prohibition, its loopholes and the slow recovery of American wine.

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