A wineman remembers the days of prohibition

Wines & Vines, Jan, 1994

Among the story-tellers at the Wine Institute December celebration of the 60th anniversary of Repeal was Louis P. Martini, chairman of the family winery noted for its fine table wines in the Napa Valley of California. Here is what he recounted of those days, when FDR made good on his promise of Repeal . . . and the 14 years previously when prohibition lay like a blight on the American people.

Martini's account and the celebration of prohibition's end is especially fitting in that Wines & Vines, born in the struggle to keep the wine industry united, during prohibition, is this year celebrating its 75th anniversary.

"Prohibition started shortly after I was born and remained until I was 14 years old.

"My father (Louis M. Martini) had been a winemaker in various areas of California from Elk Grove to Cucamonga and was actually out of a job when prohibition came.

"In 1920 he was hired to make grape juice for a company called Barnwell & Nelson near Clovis. The grape juice would be loaded with sulphur dioxide and then shipped to its destination, at which point it could be aerated until it started to ferment.

"Then he went to Kingsburg to work for E. Y. Foley, making wine, brandy and grape concentrate in a plant originally built by Italian Swiss Colony and later owned by San Francisco investors. After two years Foley went bankrupt and my dad bought a third interest in the plant. As I recall, we survived prohibition by making grape juice, grape concentrate, medicinal wines, sacramental wines, kosher wines and shipping fresh grapes. (This plant was most recently owned by Heublein and recently was razed).

"I remember a rabbi lived across the yard from our home and every day except Saturday he kept a watchful eye on the kosher wines to assure their purity. I'm sure my dad took advantage of those Saturdays to make the wines more palatable with a little S|O.sub.2~ and tartaric acid.

"We also had some bright gaugers (government men who kept track of the gallonage) in those days. One of them inspected the interior of a freshly-emptied brandy tank with a candle and blew up and burned down half the winery.

"I recall one of our principal customers for sacramental wines was the Brotherhood Corporation in New York which was very big in wines for the Catholic Church. We even built a building for them on the Kingsburg property so they could have a California address. I think they still exist in New York. (Brotherhood, still very much alive, was founded in 1839 and claimed that it is America's oldest winery.)

"As I was growing up I was not that aware of prohibition because we always had wine on the table and even in a restaurant my dad would bring his own wine and we'd drink it out of coffee cups with the bottle under the table. I remember that we were always placed in booths with drawn curtains at the Flor Di Italia (still popular in San Francisco) because the owner wanted to hide the wine.

"Kingsburg was a Swedish community with about 13 Protestant churches for 1,300 people and a very large WCTU chapter. Being the only Italian winemakers in town we were not exactly the most popular family around. However, I recall that a number of city officials would often drop by the lab to have a taste of whatever happened to be opened.

"Shipping fresh grapes back east for home winemakers was one of our activities. These were shipped in 25-pound lug boxes which were assembled on the property. I recall nailing these together and trying to go faster to keep up with the professionals--I still have a split thumbnail from that adventure! "I recall once when I was about six years old getting very drunk by sniffing a row of newly emptied brandy barrels, of course, beverage brandy was prohibited, so all the brandy we made was high proof for fortification of sweet wines. "My maternal grandfather also had a vineyard and winery in Livermore before prohibition. He closed the winery but continued the vineyard, shipping his grapes to the east coast. Wente brothers at that time acted as shippers in that area and my grandfather had shipped the grapes through them. Most of the time he did fairly well but one year the price of grapes did not pay for the freight. According to a story the late Ernest Wente told me, my grandfather came to pick up his check and discovered that he had to write one instead. Ernie said the old man slowly shook his head, pulled out his checkbook and said he never dreamed he would ever have to write a check for something he sold. "Since there were very few wineries and a lot of grapes in the Kingsburg area we crushed a lot of grapes. Crushing operations were slow and often wagon and truck-loads of grapes filled our front yard and queued up Dinuba Avenue for over a block. It was not unusual for these loads to sit there for several days. The growers would unhitch their horses at night and ride them home, then be back the first thing in the morning. The nights got quite cold during the latter part of the season and often those with trucks (mostly model Ts) had to build fires under their crankcases to thin the oil so they could crank them. Occasionally actual fist fights developed as growers were jockeying for position in line. As far as I could tell we crushed three varieties of grapes: whites, reds, and Muscats.