Prohibition

[Scuffy]

Absinthe- those are your bottles! How great for a collection! As for bottle hunting how did you find them? My Aunt and my cousins are in up past their necks when it comes to bottle hunting/collecting and I know they've gone through all kinds of research to find things like that. At either rate that's a great piece of history!! Thanks for sharing!

[Absinthe_1900]

I have a few bottles around the house. (A few more were added after this photo was taken)


Some of Jung & Wulff's prohibition era ads were done with a nudge, and a wink.

[John in Covina]

It's funny, i recall a couple phases where cordial making was in. When I was real little i recall that you could get mixes to make your own with mostly vodka base. Later there was this whole make your own Kahlua thing going around.

[Absinthe_1900]

Jung & Wulff survived using that strategy, but ironically they sold out their business post prohibition, due to the public prefering harder liquor, over liqueurs, and cordials, as well as the effect of the economic depression on their sales.

[Charlz]

I live in the heart of the bible belt, were "dry" counties and cities still exist. I don't live in one (thank God), but they are all around.

In fact, as a bit of trivia, just about 60 miles up the road from me, Jack Daniel's distillery and world headquarters operates inside a dry county. You can take a factory tour and watch it being made there, but you have to go over the county line to buy it. How weird, and hypocritical is that? A county seat that gets it's lion's share of revenue from a whiskey maker, but does not allow the sale of it. They never re-legalized it after prohibition. Only in the South.

I live about 20 minutes from that county. You are right about the hypocrisy. Jack Daniels is the number one employer there. How you get around the dry dry county crap in Lewisburg; first you buy one square foot of land from Jack Daniels corp. Then you join the landowners association. You can then drink in the Jack Daniels private bar. Crazy Eh?

[dhermann1]

For those who never heard the phrase, "bathtub gin" was the generic name for any of the alcoholic concoctions that people came up with. Some of them were reasonable facsimiles to real booze, others were just plain deadly poison.
If you see the film, or the original TV series from around 1960, "The Untouchables", they were all about the prohibition era, and the constant war waged between the legal agencies and the bootleggers. The term "The Roaring '20's" refers to this, as well.
I saw an interesting documentary once about the early bootleggers in Detroit. Since Detroit was right across the river from Canada, good booze was available just a boat ride away. A thriving illicit trade developed during the early years of prohibition, with many colorful characters emerging. By the late '20's big organized crime syndicates had pretty much wiped out all of the small time players. It got a lot more serious and a lot more deadly as the decade progressed.
This also influenced the development of Jazz. In western Missouri there was a political boss named Prendergast who controlled all the western counties of the state, which included Kansas City. Because of the rampant corruption in this stretch, the speakeasies of the area became a major industry. Since the liquor was flowing freely, all the talented Jazz men migrated there, too. The Kansas City era of Jazz was a major part of Jazz history. Early Jazz was based on an 8 bar stanza. Later the 32 bar stanza developed, which became the basis of Swing music. Fletch can explain this MUCH better than I can. Anyway, if it weren't for Prohibition bringing all the great Jazz men together in and around Kansas City, American music might have developed in an entirely different way.

[Matt Crunk]

Things have been omitted. People could manufacture (distill, brew) alcohol for personal consumption up to, I believe, 200 gallons per year. People could buy (from where I do not know) and consume alcoholic beverages with a doctor's prescription.
***
I wonder whether importing liquor, or returning with it from a trip abroad, would have been legal were the amount obviously small enough to be considered "for personal consumption?"

I believe that exception only applied to beer and wine, and not distilled spirits (and still applies to this day unless you are a registered distiller). My father-in-law homebrews both beer and wine, but, from all I've read, distilling would be against the law even for personal consumption. Interesting enough, Alabama law still prohibits homebrewing of beer, but it is not enforced and many people homebrew freely here.

[Absinthe_1900]

Correct, distilling without a federal license is very illegal.

[Minerva]

Gorgeous bottles, Absinthe! That's quite a collection there.

[Absinthe_1900]

Thank You, a number of the bottles date from the immediate post-prohibition era, and a few others I haven't yet unveiled, date even earlier. (The ones still full, have turned out to be a revelation as far as taste.)

The history of these New Orleans distillers, and their activities before and after prohibition, kept a part of New Orleans culture alive after the govt. banned absinthe in 1912, and helped revive the spirit when the ban was lifted in 2007.

What began with being curious about how these companies came about, quickly took on a life of it's own, and in the process lead me to meeting a number of people who were involved with these companies, and getting to hear firsthand their stories.

I still have a lot ahead of me before this is complete.