QotD: Grape growing during Prohibition

Come Prohibition, most vineyards were pulled up. Except when owners negotiated good contracts with the church, since the amendment coincided with an enormous rise in communion-taking church goers.

A few vineyards survived selling grapes for juice or the newly popular "flavorings," often sold in casks suitable for fermentation. Grapes were shipped around the country fresh as well as in dehydrated "bricks," labeled with the stern warning: "Do NOT add this to five gallons of warm water, and do NOT add ten pounds of sugar, and yeast, or it will become wine, which would be ILLEGAL!"

Traveling for weeks in un-refrigerated boxcars meant many grapes WERE wine by the time they arrived.

Jennifer "Chotzi" Rosen, "The Color Purple", Cork Jester, 2006-06-28