What To Do With All Those Wine Grapes During Prohibition?

During the years of Prohibition in the United States (1920-1933), vineyard owners and businesses producing products from grapes thrived by capitalizing on legal loopholes that allowed the sale of concentrated grape juice or liquid grape juice for home consumption. 

Companies producing wine for authorized purposes, like for medicinal or sacramental reasons, some wineries tried to keep going by making juice, jams and jellies, and other grape by-products. There were experiments with “non-vinous” products such as concentrated fruit juice and solid molded forms known as winebricks. The wine bricks were made of a solid grape juice concentrate which were sold with yeast tablets for fermentation. There was a caution on the package for the consumer, warning against allowing illegal fermentation to take place. The warning was the recipe: “Do not dissolve the concentrate in a gallon of water, add yeast, and let it sit in a dark place for 21 days, or else it will ferment into wine.”

A small percentage of grapes were even used for food products during these years. Let’s take a look at these different attempts to utilize the wine grapes during these Prohibition years.

San Luis Obispo County Grape Growing

The Spanish mission era in California lasted from 1769 to 1833, during which 21 missions were founded to spread Christianity and establish Spanish claims in the region later known as California.. These missions aimed to evangelize the local Native American populations. In what became San Luis Obispo County once the region became part of the state of California in September 1850, three of these missions had been built. During these mission years, Alicante Bouschet grapes were brought to the region by the Spanish. 

In the early years of the missions, vineyards were planted with what we know as Mission grapes. The Alicante Bouschet grapes, also eventually planted in the vineyards, were added to the wine made with the Mission grapes.  These Alicante Bouschet grapes deepened the red color of the wine made for sacramental purposes in the Missions.

The early years of grape growing in San Luis Obispo County are considered to be 1873 and 1883. During these years, the county assessor was tracking the planting of the grapefruit first by the number of grapevines. By the end of this ten-year period, the acreage and gallons of wine produced had changed.  There was an economic boom in the United States by the 1880s, and it resulted in more than 150 vineyards being planted in San Luis Obispo County.

In the 1880s and 1890s, John, William, and Martin Ernst of the Geneseo district of the county planted thirty acres of Zinfandel, Mataro, Carignane, Burger, Riesling, and also Flame Tokay, Black Hamburg, Muscat, Rose of Peru, and other table grapes. By 1896, in what is now known as Templeton, Andrew York had forty acres planted on his acreage of the wine grape – Zinfandel. 

Adolphe Siot was the first to plant Zinfandel in the area just west of the town of Templeton, the first vintner to make Zinfandel and sell it. The vineyards and winery that we know today as the Rotta Winery were established by Adolphe Siot, who purchased the land in 1891 from the West Coast Land Company. He was the one who trained the Rotta family and probably the Pesenti family as well. 

The Nerelli family was on what is now known as York Mountain, and their history is different. Their viticultural skills were learned from the York family.  Ultimately, the Yorks and the Nerellis partnered in producing wine that was shipped to wineries in Lodi and other areas in Northern California.

In the 1880s, A.B. Hasbrouck of the Arroyo Grande valley area in south San Luis Obispo County had 35 acres in which he planted various grapes. He planted Rose of Peru in 1885, Muscat in 1886 and 1887, Zinfandel, Chardonnay, and Malaga in 1889. He produced 150 gallons of wine at his winery, St. Remy. 

By 1911, the York family had planted additional grape acreage amounting to over 80 acres, producing over 100,000 gallons of wine from this one winery. As a note, these Templeton families collaborated with one another until Pearl Harbor, when all the sons of these Italian families joined the army or navy.

By the 1920s, after Prohibition began,  the families from Northern Italy who had moved to the Templeton Gap area in the county transformed the landscape by removing the forests and farming grains and planting Zinfandel grapes in their own small vineyards.

Remember, Prohibition banned the sale and transportation of liquor, including wine and beer, but it was legal to grow grapes, sell them, and make a limited amount of wine on your property. This was a hidden gem for San Luis Obispo County; it allowed for home winemaking.

Welch’s Grape Juice

Thomas Bramwell Welch (1825-1903) a British-American dentist and minister, had developed how to preserve unfermented grape juice for use in the Communion Service at Methodist churches. Originally called Dr. Welch’s Unfermented Wine, Welch’s was a prominent brand that produced grape juice for religious purposes. 

His son, Dr. Charles Welch, Jr. (1852-1926), was also a dentist for his early career but turned his practice over to his sister in the 1890s to focus on the grape juice business. He spent efforts marketing his father’s Unfermented Wine as grape juice. As an example, between May 5 and October 31, 1893, the newly named Welch’s Grape Juice was sold to thousands of people at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (also known as the Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair), helping to spread awareness of it across the country. 

Welch’s Grape Juice was advertised in religious journals, temperance publications, health and medical journals, women’s periodicals, and national magazines. By 1910, the company was selling a million dollars in grape juice a year, and by 1913, sales had doubled. As a note of interest, Charles Welch was a strong supporter of the prohibition cause. He ran for various public offices as the Prohibition Party candidate from Chautauqua County in New York.

California Wine Association  (C.W.A.) 1894-1936

A group of San Francisco Bay Area winemakers and dealers who combined interests to gain favorable financial control over the market got together and formed the California Wine Association. The Association was formed during the Depression of 1894 from seven leading California wine firms to secure favorable options from grape growers and winemakers, and to raise prices and stimulate trade. In 1894, the wine industry was in a perilous state. California’s 200,000 acres of vineyard were overproductive, and California wines were being sold for as little as ten cents a gallon. The California winemakers and the dealers were in dire financial straits. 

The C.W.A. became a syndicate or cartel and the single buyer for ripe grapes from winegrowers. For the next two decades, the uniform syndicate held substantial bargaining power over winegrowers. This led to the wine wars of the 1890s, eventually agreeing upon standards and stabilizing the quality of California wine in the process.

By the early twentieth century the quality and production of California wine had vastly improved. Isaias W. Hellman, owner of a vast southern California vineyard, invested in a substantial amount of C.W.A. stock. This led to expanding the Association’s hold across the state making them the largest wine distributor in the country. By 1907, C.W.A. had a storage capacity of nearly thirty million gallons, controlling the forty-three million gallons produced annually in California.

By 1914, the Association had reached its intended goal, having established control over eighty percent of the wine manufactured in the state of California. Then came Prohibition and a depression in the wine industry. C.W.A. pursued other business ventures during the first several years of Prohibition, such as manufacturing grape juice along with other non-alcoholic beverages. These alternative forms of revenue failed to deliver a substantial profit eventually leading the Association to divest their wine stock.

By 1935, C.W.A. sold all remaining wine stock to a San Francisco Cooperative, Grape Fruit Industries, Ltd, and the Association was dissolved.

Wine Used in Food or Tobacco 

According to Thomas Pinney in his book A History of Wine in America From Prohibition to the Present, the Volstead Act allowed wine to be used in several ways. Wine could be used in food or in tobacco as flavoring: thus, the Colonial Grape Products Company during Prohibition had an extensive trade with Campbell’s Soup for sherry as a seasoning. They also had a trade with the Bayuk Cigar Company (maker of Phillies Cigars as seen in the Edward Hopper painting called Nighthawks) for wine to cure tobacco leaves. All of this was allowed by the language of the amendment, which prohibited manufacture only for “beverage purposes.”

Vino Sano Company

The brand, Vino Sano, produced grape bricks, a form of concentrated grape juice sold during Prohibition. The chunks of dehydrated grape juice was used to make wine during Prohibition. These bricks were designed to be dissolved in water and could be fermented into wine, although the packaging often included warnings about this process to avoid legal trouble.

A grape brick was a solid chunk of dehydrated block of grape concentrate, stems, pulp, and skins, costing about a dollar.  The brick would be dissolved into a gallon of water. The “brick” was about the size of a pound of butter. The drink was agreeable to a general audience. The instructions on the accompanying label stated what you should not do. Not to add sugar and yeast or leave in a dark place, or “it might ferment and become wine.”

Vino Sano had specific sales and distribution points, and its activities and influence were widespread, particularly in California, where grape production flourished. But in major cities like San Francisco and New York, production also flourished. In 1927, Vino Sano’s owner, Karl Offer, faced indictment in San Francisco by anti-alcohol officials. Vino Sano also had a sales office on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, where U.S. dry agents conducted a raid, arresting the manager and two salesmen.

The bricks came in many flavors to cater to home vintners, which mimicked popular wines of the time, including:  Burgundy, Claret, Muscatel, Port, Riesling, Sauterne, and Tokay.  Please see the ad for salesmen wanted for Vino Sano wine grape bricks below.

Garrett & Co. / Virginia Dare

Garrett and Company, winemakers in New York by 1920, managed to survive and prosper during the Prohibition years. They took the alcohol out of wine, doing their best to retain the wine’s flavor. The extracted alcohol was used to make pure fruit and vegetable flavors ranging from vanilla to onion. The plant produced 15-million-quart bottles of Virginia Dare non-alcoholic wine a year, as well as 20 million bottles of flavoring extract.

Paul Garrett, the Dean of American Winemakers, was the president of Garrett & Co., and the company had been founded by his uncle, W.C. Garrett, in his home state of North Carolina. At age fourteen, he began a seven-year apprenticeship under his uncle, Charles Garrett, as an “agriculturist” and in the wine business. In 1865, Uncle Charles and his brother, Dr. F. M. Garrett, purchased Sidney Weller’s commercial winery, Medoc Vineyard in Halifax County, N.C. After his uncle’s death, the business passed into other hands, but Paul continued as a commission salesman under a contract. It was then that Paul Garrett established his own winery at Littleton and afterwards near Weldon, operating under the name Garrett & Company.

Wine Bottle (Right)

Fruit Industries, Ltd.  

Fruit Industries, Ltd. was established in 1929 and was created to address the surplus of wine grapes caused by the ban on alcohol production and sales. Fruit Industries played a notable role in the wine history of California, particularly during the Prohibition era, by providing a way for individuals to engage in winemaking despite the legal restrictions. 

Fruit Industries, Ltd. was formed from a merger of several wine-making concerns, including the California Wine Association, which contributed its assets.  Paul Garrett put this deal together. This is the Garrett who was president of the Garrett & Company mentioned in the previous section. 

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, Garrett became a millionaire making and selling wine, particularly his Virginia Dare label. He anticipated national Prohibition and moved from North Carolina to New York. He established several wineries and vineyards at several places in the Finger Lakes District as well as in southern California. 

His de-alcoholized Virginia Dare “wine” mentioned in the previous section was sold to consumers so that they might add their own alcohol. He also added a cola-type grape-flavored drink to his list of products. His other successful undertaking was the production and marketing of a grape syrup under the name Vine-Glo, whereby purchasers could make their own wine.  

By 1919, he owned seventeen processing plants with a capacity of ten million gallons. When Prohibition was repealed, he was the only vintner capable of selling wine in every “Wet” state as he owned vineyards and facilities in the Finger Lakes Region of New York, the Mission Vineyards and Winery in Cucamonga, California, and several wineries in Missouri, Ohio, and Virginia.

Garrett & Company combined with a few influential California wineries into Fruit Industries Inc. and sold the product of grape concentrate under the name of Vine-Glo. The federal government took Fruit Industries into court over that, but the wineries won the case in 1928.

Garrett’s efforts to enhance the reputation of American wines was to induce legislatures to classify light alcoholic beverages as food so that they would be free of liquor taxes. He was in the winemaking business for more than fifty years. He had a great loyalty to American wines and lived the last twenty years of his life at Bluff Point at Penn Yan, New York, which is in the Finger Lakes grape district. He was married to Evelyn Garrett, and they had three daughters. Born November 3,1863, and died March 18, 1940, of pneumonia. 

Vine-Glo

Prohibition banned alcohol in the United States under the National Prohibition Act, commonly known as the Volstead Act. But the Act produced a few loopholes; in Section 29, which stated that non-alcoholic grape products could still be sold, and people could make fruit juices at home from them.

Vine-Glo was created by Giuseppe “Joseph” Gallo, Sr.; he was the father of vintners Ernest and Julio Gallo. It was a concentrated grape juice brick designed to be diluted and consumed as a non-alcoholic beverage. 

Fruit Industries, formed by the California Wine Association, marketed Vine-Glo and other grape products. C.W.A. received a $1,300,000 loan from the Federal Farm Board. The Federal Farm Board was established by the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929 from the Federal Farm Loan Board, which was established by the Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916. It had a revolving fund of half a billion dollars to stabilize prices and to promote the sale of agricultural products.

The product was advertised with tips for preventing fermentation. Fruit Industries also promoted the Farm Board and carried a statement it was “legal in your own home”. One million gallons of Vine-Glo were sold with eight wine-flavored varieties in the first financial year.

When Vine-Glo was introduced, the “Drys” protested it. Mabel Walker Willebradt, who was the Assistant Attorney General at the time, ruled that it was legal under the Volstead Act. By 1931, Fruit Industries produced advertisements asserting that Vine-Glo didn’t break any laws. However, a federal judge ruled in 1931 that grape concentrate could not legally be used to make fruit juice.

The company’s confidence in the legality of its operation was bolstered by the fact that it had succeeded in hiring as its attorney Mabel Walker Willebrandt, who for eight years had been assistant attorney general in charge of prosecuting violations of the Volstead Act. It is even stated that Willebrandt had helped to work out the terms of the Vine-Glo scheme before she left her public office to return to private practice.

Fruit Industries ceased making Vine-Glo a month after the court decision was affirmed by the Director of the Bureau of Prohibition. Grape concentrate would not be exempt under section 29 of the Volstead Act.

Many other smaller grape juice companies also emerged or expanded during Prohibition, capitalizing on the demand for non-alcoholic grape products.

Mabel Walker Willebrandt (1889-1963) 

In 1921, President Warren G. Harding named Willebrandt Assistant Attorney General. She held that post for eight years, first under President Harding and then under President Calvin Coolidge. Willebrandt was responsible for managing federal prisons, for all federal income tax litigation (her briefs submitted before the Supreme Court on the income tax helped set the basic interpretations on the scope of the tax system), and for prosecuting violations of the Volstead Act.

She became identified with the anti-liquor crusade in the public’s eye and devoted much of her career in the government to seeing that prohibition was efficiently enforced. Willebrandt’s connection with prohibition came through her government position. Mabel was responsible for overseeing the prosecution’s liquor law violators arrested by a federal agent working in any agency, as all prosecutions were funneled through local U. S. Attorneys of the Justice Department. 

When she left government office, she left anti-liquor advocacy behind. Willebrandt brokered her expertise learned from the government into a private law career. Her first client was California Fruit Industries. As we know now, this company specialized in supplying grapes for the home wine maker — under the Volstead Act, families were allowed to make 200 gallons of wine per year for domestic consumption. They hired Willebrandt because they wished to expand the provisions of the federal enforcement code to allow the shipment of grape concentrate for making into wine. 

Post Prohibition

The most striking paradox of Prohibition, in California at any rate, was that it led to a large increase in the planting of vineyards. The provision of the Volstead Act allowing the legal production of “fruit juices” in the home led to an immediate demand for fresh grapes all over the country. The result was remarkable: the price of grapes shot up from $10 to $100 a ton and even higher as the produce agents competed for each carload of grapes. 

California had about 300,000 acres of vineyard in 1919; by 1926, after six years of Prohibition, that acreage had almost doubled, and shipments of grapes had grown by 125 percent. Then, unluckily for the growers, the market was oversupplied. The boom went bust, and the years of Prohibition ended as they had begun, with the spectacle of discouraged growers pulling out their vines.

In San Luis Obispo County, the Italian families in the area had continued to plant and grow Zinfandel grapes throughout the Prohibition years. These Zinfandel grapes were used across the county for home winemaking. And to this day, Zinfandel grapes continue to be grown and made into wine by several wineries in the county.

Wine History Project of San Luis Obispo County Collection Artifacts

Embossed Jug | BOT113

Amber/brown glass gallon jug with grapes embossed on it. Antique 1920-30 Maywood Glass Grape Vines design. Produced in various sizes, this one has a loop handle and a cap.

Maywood Glass Company was organized in 1929 by Benjamin H. Koons, but the factory was not actually in operation and producing glass until sometime in 1930. Maywood Glass was located in Compton, California, which is part of the city of Los Angeles. Maywood Glass Company was purchased by Anchor Hocking Glass Corporation in 1959.

Wine Brick Packaging | EPH158   

On July 24, 1920, the Internal Revenue Bureau issued a statement that homemade wine and cider could have more than 0.5 percent alcohol if it was consumed at home and “non-intoxicating.” Home winemaking was now legal up to 200 gallons per year – or the equivalent of about one thousand 750ml bottles.

Dried grape bricks were an ingenious idea for vintners to continue to sell their grapes. University of California, Davis began working on perfecting the process for making bricks in the summer of 1919. Their goal was to evaporate away the water content while keeping the grape’s color and flavor, and not drying them to the point of becoming raisins.

These grape concentrate products were marketed for making non-intoxicating juice but carried a clever warning to customers not to allow their product to ferment too long else they ran the risk of making an intoxicating wine in the process.

The warning was the instruction on how to home brew:  “After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty-one days, because then it would turn to wine.”

Sources

Prohibition: Fruit Industries Ltd. written by Cindy Lambert, December 11, 2019 from oral history by Special Collections & Archives  California Polytechnic University Pomona  Theophile  (Philo) Biane (1909-1999), renowned California vintner and proprietor and president of Brookside Winery in Redlands, Guasti (Italian Vineyard Company)

Wine Postcard Series “An Iconic Wine Country Postcard: The Story of a “Borrowed” Image” written by Gail Unzelman

Wine Postcard Series “Tubbs Wine Cellar: Also Known as Hillcrest and Chateau Montelena” written by Gail Unzelman

Wine History by Decade 1890s  written by Libbie Agran

Pinney, Thomas. A History of Wine in America: From the Beginnings to Prohibition.Berkeley:  University of California Press,  c1989  http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft967nb63q/

Pinney, Thomas. A History of Wine in America: From Prohibition to Present. Berkeley: University of California Press, c.

California Wine Association records at Stanford University

Klees, Emerson. Paul Garrett: Dean of American Winemakers. Chicago: Cameo Press, c2010

Willebrandt, Mabel Walker The Inside of Prohibition, Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers, c1929

Paul Garrett, Dictionary of North Carolina, Biography, edited by William S. Powell, by the University of North Carolina Press