Today, 79 years ago, the 21st amendment to the constitution was ratified, making legal once more the sale, production and consumption of the alcoholic beverage! This is a momentous date in the history of this country. Prohibition left an indelible impact on the culture of drinking in this country that can still be felt today. It really changed the way we approach drinks and drinking, much so for the worse. It harmed the country economically and crippled our cultural expansion. So today we celebrate the end of a horrible era in our nation's history! I beseech each of you to have at least some sip of alcohol on this glorious day, take a tiny tipple, a dainty drink of some delicious distillate, knock back perhaps a bottle of some brew, feel free to let flow the fanciful flavor of some fermented fruit past your lips. Drink tonight, for four score years ago we could not do so under the grace of the law.
If you live in Colorado or Washington, if you've ever enjoyed the illegal substance of marijuana in another state, if you've ever thought at all about these drug laws or how they've had any impact on your life, drink tonight, for hardships like these have precedent.
If you've ever made or enjoyed a joke about "christian gaming servers", drink tonight, for that is precisely the kind of moral superiority that led to the downfall and demonization of liquor, and stunted our society's maturity. The plan of morality backfired, and made things worse for everyone. Hypocrisy was also rampant, drunks were disorderly? Maybe, but is vandalizing an establishment for the sale of liquor better? No, it is not. A rule against a supposedly immoral act does not erase the act, and it does not stop it. It makes problems on top of the old problems, and causes a backlash of even darker morality beneath the law supposedly upholding the moral standpoint. Such shaky foundations crumbled on this day, and our feet are now back on the ground.
So here's to the new production of American spirits! Bourbon production has been high since prohibition was repealed, it was fortunate that the bourbon distillers in the midwest mostly did not sell their places of production, because it caused production to resume post-haste after the repeal. Rye was not so fortunate. Being mostly a product of the eastern part of the country, the owners of such distilleries there wound up selling their land and production could not resume so quickly. This country's taste for rye was nearly lost as a result, but today hope is back! Many of the great liquor companies of our day are just now starting to get good rye back on the market! Knob creek, Wild Turkey, Bulleit, and other such common makers of bourbon have all been releasing ryes recently. It is a good day for American whiskey.
Here's to the california wine boom, and the fertility of that valley of grapes over yonder that put wine-production in this country on the map. Here's to the Volstead act, sacramental wine producers who continued on through prohibition, for purposes of church, you understand (there's more moral hypocrisy at work!).
The Volstead Act specifically allowed individual farmers to make certain wines "on the legal fiction that it was a non-intoxicating fruit-juice for home consumption", and many people did so. Enterprising grape farmers produced liquid and semi-solid grape concentrates, often called "wine bricks" or "wine blocks". This demand led California grape growers to increase their land under cultivation by about 700% in the first five years of prohibition. The grape concentrate was sold with a warning: "After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine."
The Volstead Act allowed the sale of sacramental wine to priests and rabbis. This was used as a loophole to purchase wine by imposters as well.
Here's to the craft beer movement, and all the numerous, numerous microbreweries around the country making fine (and some not so fine) products. Beers for every taste, and new beers coming into existence every day.
Here's to the revitalization and restoration of knowledge about drinks and the types of alcohols, some of which were lost entirely, not only to this country but to the world. Good vermouths and other aperitifs and fortified wines of many kinds. BITTERS, PERIOD, but now also it has become something of a growing market, good, new, innovative types of bitters are cropping up all over. Liqueurs and lost alcohols, such as creme de violette, creme yvette(which is a similar thing), forbidden fruit liqueur(made from pomellos? Holy shit!), parfait amour, elderflower liqueur, quinquina wines, orange bitters and other such things are coming back. The ban on absinthe in this country was ended in 2007, marking the end of another era denoting a lack of understanding behind the restriction of certain alcoholic beverages. There are now good quality domestic absinthes on the market.
In turn, here's to the revitalization of the cocktail! Much of the knowledge of mixing drinks was lost during prohibition, as the bartenders were put out of work and some retired or got to old to continue once it ended, and many did not go the way of the speakeasy to continue making drinks. Most did not record their creations. Some of the best drinks were quite possibly lost to history. But here's to the ones that made it, and the resurgence in the knowledge of them! For in drink making there is a certain kind of alchemy, a flourish of creation - an art and a science, both, and for the outcome to be balanced and well-crafted is the height of the trade of bartending. For to mix poorly is to disregard both the respect and the dangers of drink, and to approach it with the childish nature of the modern mixer is to demean and deface the dignity behind the act. If only adults may legally drink, then let us drink like adults - for through proper mixing there is a drink for every palette.
Here's to the imports! The stuff from other, wiser places, much of which got us through those dark thirteen years. Canadian whisk(e)ys, smuggled over and around the border in varying degrees and calibers. There is a lasting mark on Canadian whiskey today, in that while America couldn't make its rye anymore, Canada provided the substitute (though almost never made from actual rye), and so today much Canadian whiskey is still referred to as "rye", despite it being a misnomer. The ubiquity of rum over the world made it cheap, and getting it to smuggle was easy, but the price turnover was low, as the demand was not great. French Champagnes, English gins, various whiskeys were the better selling items in the major cities. Scotch, before prohibition, was considered a drink for lesser men:
(Before the Great Experiment, Scotch wasn't particularly popular on these shores. To order it in a bar more or less marked one as a weak-wristed, Limey-loving cake-eater, but once good rye and bourbon got scarce, the gents were more willing to compromise their standards of masculinity).
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