1920–1933 · United States
What Prohibition did to American vineyards
The vineyards did not disappear — they were replanted to thick-skinned grapes that could survive a rail journey to home winemakers.
What happened
The Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors, but the enabling legislation permitted households to produce a substantial quantity of fruit juice annually, which was widely and openly used to make wine.
Demand for shipping grapes consequently rose, and Californian acreage actually increased during the period. What changed was what was planted: thin-skinned quality varieties were pulled out in favour of thick-skinned, high-yielding grapes such as Alicante Bouschet that could survive a week in a boxcar.
Sacramental and medicinal exemptions kept a small number of wineries operating legally throughout.
The lasting damage was not to the vines but to everything around them: the distribution networks, the commercial expertise, the restaurant culture and the domestic market for dry table wine all disappeared, and the three-tier distribution system introduced at repeal shaped the American wine market for the rest of the century.
Recovery took decades. Californian fine wine did not re-establish itself internationally until the 1960s and 1970s.
Prohibition is often said to have destroyed American viticulture. Vineyard area grew; what was destroyed was the market, the expertise and the quality of what was planted.
How firmly this is dated
Documented. Recorded contemporaneously. The date is not in question.
Federal statute, agricultural census data and the recorded shift in varietal plantings across the period.
What this follows from, and leads to
A timeline is a list; these are the links between its entries.
Sources
Sources consulted
- 27 CFR Part 4 — Labeling and Advertising of Wine — US Government Publishing Office, via the Legal Information Institute
- Napa Valley Vintners — Napa Valley Vintners
- The Oxford Companion to Wine — Oxford University Press