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I am unsure how total prohibition was in this country but did the law have any affect on the use of wine for the liturgy?

There was an exception made right in the text of the amendment for wine that was for sacramental purposes.

To my knowledge, threre were very few cases of clergy abusing this privilege.

In some cities permits had to be obtained and the churches were subject to inspection to assure wine was not being "sold on the side" but as Deacon Richard mentions there were in general no major problems or arrests.

Thanks, I had always wondered about that!

The law recognized that some products containing alcohol were legitimate; they included patented medicines, flavoring extracts, pure grain alcohol for scientific and industrial purposes, and sacramental wines.

On a tangential, humorous note:
"We don't make moonshine. We make elixir for celebratory purposes."
"Happy Mohammed's birthday! . . . I never realized there were so many Moslems in Mayberry! I could've sworn Lars Hansen was a Lutheran!"
"Next week is National Potato Week!"

A toast to Dan Quayle - the patron of National Potato Week.

Fr. Serge

Is that potato or potatoe???

US Constitution

Amendment XVIII

(Ratified January 16, 1919. Repealed December 5, 1933 with the Ratification of Amendment XXI)

Section 1

After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

Section 2

The Congress and all of the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Section 3

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

Just hand me my old Martin,
For soon I will be startin'
Back to dear old Charleston far away;
Since Roosevelt's been elected
Moonshine liquour's been corrected;
We've got legal wine, whiskey, beer and gin!

During prohibition, one could purchase so-called "wine bricks", with which one could produce at home a horrific beverage loosely termed "wine". The wine brick came with directions, worded as follows:

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES immerse this product . . . . because to do so would produce WINE, an alcoholic beverage, the production, ownership, or consumption of which is illegal in the United States.

The lasting memorial of prohibition is the proliferation of crime "families" in a number of cities; they became entrenched by running speak-easies and importing adult beverages (usually from Canada), and once they had arrived, they did not propose to leave.

Fr. Serge

Wine FAQ in the Napa Valley [napanow.com]:
What's a "wine brick"?

During Prohibition, most wineries closed. A few survived by making medicinal or sacramental wine. (Yes, there did appear to be an increase in the number of sick and deeply religious people during this time.)

In order to survive financially, some wineries also produced "wine bricks". These were bricks of compressed grapes that were shipped to customers around the country with a warning notice, which read: "Warning. Do not place this wine brick in one gallon of water, stir and let sit in warm temperatures for 10 days, or it might ferment and turn into wine."

I actually knew - when I was much younger - some people who had drunk the resulting beverage. They told me that "rotgut" was the appropriate technical term!

Fr. Serge

My Dad and my Uncle Tommy, may their memories be eternal, both had occasion to drink wine fermented from a wine brick, an experience that they discovered many years later to have had in common. Tommy related the conversation to me long afterwards, telling me that they concluded it to be the reason that neither ever again drank wine, slaking any thirsts for alcohol with beer or whiskey instead.

Many years,

Neil

I have been retired from the post offices since 1997, but anyway I always laughed at the site on my route. There was a new, farley upscale sub-division on my route - well most of it was that way - but anyway, at the back of one of the properties there was an old stil, pretty good size too, that had been busted up many years before. I was always amazed, they built everything around it. Just left it lying there. A part of Amerciana I guess.

That was also the period in companies first realized the importance of hops in malt extract for baking. They dutifully put the instruction "do not dissolve in water and add yeast, as this would make beer, which is illegal."

Also, there was an address to write to to get recipes for hopped malt extract. The recipes did indeed come. Shortly thereafter, another set of more interesting recipes would come from another state . . .


But those families only produced one president

hawk