Food for Thought: A Noble Experiment
“I was brought up to believe that Scotch whisky would need a tax preference to survive in competition with Kentucky bourbon.”
— Hugo Black
January 16, 2019, marked the 100th anniversary of Prohibition, the date Congress ratified the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning “the manufacture, sale, and distribution of intoxicating liquors.” Becoming law in 1920, the Prohibition Era lasted until 1933. President Herbert Hoover called it a “noble experiment,” but most Americans chose other adjectives, most unprintable.
The law drove bootlegging underground and brought a rise to organized crime, speakeasies and widespread imbibing by women, to name a few unintended consequences. It also helped establish the modern craft cocktail movement. Actually, the popularity of cocktails beginning in the late 1890s was one of the many forces that led to Prohibition. Mixology catapulted to a new level during this “dry” period, not as an enhancer but more like a distractor to the foul-tasting bootleg alcohol being manufactured in the backwoods and bathtubs across America.
Without beer or wine legally available, many bootleggers made homemade alcohol by any means necessary to sell on the black market. Most of the alcohol came from industrial alcohol (the kind used for making perfumes, ink and camp stove fuel), which needed to be denatured or cleansed of harmful chemicals. As you can imagine, the flavor was terrible. Moonshiners would try to mimic desired flavors by mixing in other ingredients. For example, “bourbon” was simulated by adding dead rats or rotten meat to the moonshine and letting it sit for a few days. The smokey flavor of “scotch” was simulated with alcohol and creosote, an antiseptic made from wood tar.
Simulating gin was popular because it was the easiest, cheapest and fastest to create: water-diluted alcohol, glycerin and juniper oil. A couple of popular gin-based cocktails from the era include Bee’s Knees, using honey, and the Last Word, which included Chartreuse and maraschino cherry liqueur.
Every year on Repeal Day, December 5, Americans raise a glass in thanks to President Franklin D. Roosevelt (a notorious martini drinker) for ending Prohibition. The noble experiment was deemed a failure and most had concluded that banning alcohol was, well, silly, and that most people enjoy a good drink from time to time.
What the era did give us, however, was plenty of interesting stories that led to some iconic books, films, television shows and, of course, exquisite cocktails and mocktails.
