Prohibition

[Scuffy]

Absinthe- those are your bottles! How great for a collection! As for bottle hunting how did you find them? My Aunt and my cousins are in up past their necks when it comes to bottle hunting/collecting and I know they've gone through all kinds of research to find things like that. At either rate that's a great piece of history!! Thanks for sharing!

 

[Absinthe_1900]

I have a few bottles around the house. (A few more were added after this photo was taken)

Some of Jung & Wulff's prohibition era ads were done with a nudge, and a wink.

 

[John in Covina]

It's funny, i recall a couple phases where cordial making was in. When I was real little i recall that you could get mixes to make your own with mostly vodka base. Later there was this whole make your own Kahlua thing going around.

 

[Absinthe_1900]

Jung & Wulff survived using that strategy, but ironically they sold out their business post prohibition, due to the public prefering harder liquor, over liqueurs, and cordials, as well as the effect of the economic depression on their sales.

 

[Charlz]

I live in the heart of the bible belt, were "dry" counties and cities still exist. I don't live in one (thank God), but they are all around.

In fact, as a bit of trivia, just about 60 miles up the road from me, Jack Daniel's distillery and world headquarters operates inside a dry county. You can take a factory tour and watch it being made there, but you have to go over the county line to buy it. How weird, and hypocritical is that? A county seat that gets it's lion's share of revenue from a whiskey maker, but does not allow the sale of it. They never re-legalized it after prohibition. Only in the South.

I live about 20 minutes from that county. You are right about the hypocrisy. Jack Daniels is the number one employer there. How you get around the dry dry county crap in Lewisburg; first you buy one square foot of land from Jack Daniels corp. Then you join the landowners association. You can then drink in the Jack Daniels private bar. Crazy Eh?

 

[dhermann1]

A couple of related notes

For those who never heard the phrase, "bathtub gin" was the generic name for any of the alcoholic concoctions that people came up with. Some of them were reasonable facsimiles to real booze, others were just plain deadly poison.
If you see the film, or the original TV series from around 1960, "The Untouchables", they were all about the prohibition era, and the constant war waged between the legal agencies and the bootleggers. The term "The Roaring '20's" refers to this, as well.
I saw an interesting documentary once about the early bootleggers in Detroit. Since Detroit was right across the river from Canada, good booze was available just a boat ride away. A thriving illicit trade developed during the early years of prohibition, with many colorful characters emerging. By the late '20's big organized crime syndicates had pretty much wiped out all of the small time players. It got a lot more serious and a lot more deadly as the decade progressed.
This also influenced the development of Jazz. In western Missouri there was a political boss named Prendergast who controlled all the western counties of the state, which included Kansas City. Because of the rampant corruption in this stretch, the speakeasies of the area became a major industry. Since the liquor was flowing freely, all the talented Jazz men migrated there, too. The Kansas City era of Jazz was a major part of Jazz history. Early Jazz was based on an 8 bar stanza. Later the 32 bar stanza developed, which became the basis of Swing music. Fletch can explain this MUCH better than I can. Anyway, if it weren't for Prohibition bringing all the great Jazz men together in and around Kansas City, American music might have developed in an entirely different way.

 

[Matt Crunk]

Things have been omitted. People could manufacture (distill, brew) alcohol for personal consumption up to, I believe, 200 gallons per year. People could buy (from where I do not know) and consume alcoholic beverages with a doctor's prescription.
***
I wonder whether importing liquor, or returning with it from a trip abroad, would have been legal were the amount obviously small enough to be considered "for personal consumption?"

I believe that exception only applied to beer and wine, and not distilled spirits (and still applies to this day unless you are a registered distiller). My father-in-law homebrews both beer and wine, but, from all I've read, distilling would be against the law even for personal consumption. Interesting enough, Alabama law still prohibits homebrewing of beer, but it is not enforced and many people homebrew freely here.

 

[Absinthe_1900]

Correct, distilling without a federal license is very illegal.

 

[Minerva]

Gorgeous bottles, Absinthe! That's quite a collection there.

 

[Absinthe_1900]

Thank You, a number of the bottles date from the immediate post-prohibition era, and a few others I haven't yet unveiled, date even earlier. (The ones still full, have turned out to be a revelation as far as taste.)

The history of these New Orleans distillers, and their activities before and after prohibition, kept a part of New Orleans culture alive after the govt. banned absinthe in 1912, and helped revive the spirit when the ban was lifted in 2007.

What began with being curious about how these companies came about, quickly took on a life of it's own, and in the process lead me to meeting a number of people who were involved with these companies, and getting to hear firsthand their stories.

I still have a lot ahead of me before this is complete.

 

[Mr. K.L.Bowers]

I understand that most of the mixed drinks we enjoy today are a result of prohibition and many date to that time. It was an attempt to mask the taste of the poor quality gin.

When my wife and I were first married, we rented a home dating from the early 20’s that as local legend has it was a speak easy. It was a large home and in the 1920’s was out in the country. It had a widow’s walk on the very top of the 3rd floor where we were told they would watch for the police.

Also no one has mentioned that the Kennedy dynasty was built on the successful rum running of old Joe on the Great Lakes, “importing” goods from Canada

 

[Absinthe_1900]

There were cocktails well before prohibition, with several pre-prohibition cocktail books, that document early recipes.
Mixed drinks did become even more important during prohibition because of the quality of bootleg booze, and this carried over to post prohibition, as spirits that required aging, took a few years to catch up production wise in the USA.

A few places to check out:

The Museum of the American Cocktail was recently opened in New Orleans:
http://www.museumoftheamericancocktail.org

They offer some reprinted early cocktail books, and DrinkBoy is another good resource. http://www.drinkboy.com/index.html

Tales of the Cocktail is a great place to learn, and sample cocktails from historical to modern: http://www.talesofthecocktail.com

Added an excellent selection of pre-prohibition, and prohibition era cocktail books at CocktailKingdom.com

http://www.cocktailkingdom.com/

 

[KY Gentleman]

I'm afraid I'm not savvy enough to include links on this post, but Newport, KY was widely known as "sin city" with lots of roadhouses and gambling joints.
The Chicago boys ran "Cincinnati South" in those days and theres plenty of history surrounding many of the buildings that still stand today.
During prohibition the Northern Kentucky area flourished in the vice trade.

 

[Naphtali]

A government commission appointed by the Hoover Administration in 1931 outlined all the shortcomings of Prohibition, found that most Americans held it in contempt -- and then recommended that it continue. The result was one of the loveliest bits of satire to come out of the era -- a bit of doggerel rhyme by newspaper columnist Franklin P. Adams:

Prohibition is an awful flop.
We like it!
It don't stop what it's meant to stop.
We like it!
It's left a trail of graft and slime,
It's filled the land with vice and crime,
It don't prohibit worth a dime --
Nevertheless -- we like it!

I think I have too much time on my hands. I believe Adams' doggerel verse was "adapted" from an 18th- or 19th-century bit about tobacco, at least one line of which was approximately: Tobacco is a filthy weed. / I like it. . . .

 

[Diamondback]

Also, some brewers went over to making root-beer and cream-sodas to get by until Volstead's downfall, Henry Weinhard's being a personal favorite.

BTW, John, BATF&E isn't IRS anymore, they've been kicked over to "Homeland Security".

 

[John in Covina]

I'm afraid I'm not savvy enough to include links on this post, but Newport, KY was widely known as "sin city" with lots of roadhouses and gambling joints. The Chicago boys ran "Cincinnati South" in those days and theres plenty of history surrounding many of the buildings that still stand today. During prohibition the Northern Kentucky area flourished in the vice trade.

Little Rock Arkansas was supposed to be a long the same line as to Gambling and Vice.

 

[V-Sweetheart]

A factoid to ad: Virginia has what I believe is the only licensed moonshine in the U.S. in Culpepper, VA. Since they are willing to pay tax to gov't, the government is willing to let them make some "corn squeezings" moonshine. Prohibition like the Production Code (and the Economic crisis?) is all about Politics. Hmm I think the sun is over the yardarm and a cocktail is in my near future.

 

[Ace Fedora]

We had it up north too...

While in the US Prohibition seems to have been a federal thing, the temperance movement was very active on a provincial level in Canada around the same time. The prairie provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta) were dry around 1916 to 1924.

Author James H. Gray wrote a fascinating book on the subject -- Booze: When Whisky Ruled the West -- which is still in print (although doesn't seem to be available on Amazon). It provides some great insight as to how the temperance movement came to power in Western Canada, and how the prohibition affected the everyday Joe.

(I've tried to Google up a link to the book, but the only links are to booksellers, and I don't want to turn this to a commercial post.)

 

[reetpleat]

The eighteenth amendment to the US Constitution, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages. In effect from 1920 thru 1933 and enforced under provisions governed by the Volstead Act. Various states had prohibition laws of their own, and momentum to national prohibition had built thruout the teens, with the austerity of WW1 giving the movement the final push it needed to get over the political top.

Supporters called it "The Noble Experiment," but in reality it led to an explosion of crime and vice, as organized gangs controlled the importation and distribution of bootleg beverages, and as the criminal tide escalated, public sentiment turned against the law. The amendment was officially repealed on December 6, 1933.

While I don't know, I would suspect that while it was a moral issue for some, it was also a social issue in a way. I believe that many social reformers of the day saw drink as a major factor in the ills of the working class, and truly believed that prohibition would elevate the well being of working class families. naive as that was. But I don't really know for sure.

Would you agree?

 

[reetpleat]

That's correct about the rum-runners. My grandfather spent Prohibition making twice-monthly 'business trips' to Florida to get rum. It seems the family restaurant had a speakeasy in the back room. I also suspect he was helping to stock his uncle's establishment in the red-light district, from what I've been discovering from chatting with heretofore-unknown relatives.

I would guess that the term, rum runner dates back to a time when there wa a tax on rum to England or US from The carribian and certain intrepid sounds would smuggle it in, not where it was banned, but in without paying a duty. anyone know?