Looking backward into the future

Wines & Vines, April, 1991 by Al Cribari

Looking backward into the future

Perhaps I should make a couple of remarks before I begin this column.

At the WITS in Rohnert Park on the 1st & 2nd of February last, I was offered a few comments. The first was to the effect that I must have to do a great deal of research for this column. Well, no. The column is then, a work of memory; my memoirs, if you will, plus those of my extended family and, of course, the all-important back issues of this "mag." I was raised in the business. At the age of about 8 or so my dad started to take me to the office on Saturdays, once or twice per month in the beginning and then more frequently.

The big draw was the lunch. Usually my dad went to Enrico's or Peter's back yard to meet his buddies. The food was great and the conversation -- usually in Italian -- was stimulating as they were mostly tall stories, good-natured and robust.

Thus I was able to meet many old-timers and became very interested in the development of our industry. However, the names and events, except when they are in Wines & Vines back issues, are from my memory and thus subject to correction.

The second remark had to do with my ability to remember so many facts and dates. Well, I don't. I do have impressions from 1922 on and do recall the stories of my family from 'way before then but obviously, these are recollections of recollections.

Our dad was a great story teller and so was his best friend, my mother's brother Tom Kearney. My dad's elder brother, Fiore, was very quiet and his younger brother, Tony, was almost as quiet especially around his big brother. So I heard many many stories from our dad and I seemed to have remembered most of them.

Thus, the basis of this column is verbal and written tales and how the tough times did pass.

The lead article in the April, 1920 issue was "The Shipment of Grapes to the Eastern Market." Finally, the industry admitted openly that the market for grapes -- for the short-term anyway -- lay not in syrup or fresh fruit or De-alcoholized wine, but in supplying the demand for "juice" (aka wine) grapes in the East. The market for almost everything in those days lay east of the Mississippi. And, of course, the grape customers were nearly always the recent immigrants, most of whom came from wine drinking and producing countries. Another favorable factor was that these immigrants were overwhelmingly located in port cities; this tended to concentrate their vote and gave them a big wallop, at the polls, especially when "augmented" by the big-city bosses. Without such developments, I am sure that we never would have had that famous and convoluted ruling from the IRS that "non-intoxicating fruit juices, in fact," could be made at home.

That was the good news -- the bad was that many of the new immigrants (or at least many of the Italians that I knew) procrastinated in taking out their "first papers" -- as the first step in gaining citizenship was known.

Therein was the nub of resistance against prohibition. Currently, with increasing taxes, will the same kind of resistance spring up? I think so. That is, the same kind but not to the same degree. As taxes rise, there will be more and more resistance. But not as much as there would be with total prohibition at all levels. The Drys are much too smart for that these days. What we are likely to see is a slow choking of both the sale and distribution of wine.

The Harris act -- California's "little prohibition law," was defeated 34 to 3 in the State Assembly. Now are you convinced that prohibition was not popular?

The magazine was agin' the "greedy grower who ships his grapes when they are 14% or 15%."

There was some worry about Europe sending in fresh wine grapes to the East Coast, primarily because they had fast and excellent refrigerator ships that could get from the old countries to New York City in 10 days while it took about 17 days by rail from the West Coast to the East.

The April, 1941 editorial criticized California wine men as businessmen. We came up short. There is no doubt about it; as measured by most criteria and by most other industries, we in the wine business were very naive. While most other industries came out of the war stronger and more powerful, the wine industry came out oversold, overstocked, overpriced and overspent. But then, again we were more interested in paying off the mortgages and keeping the bills current than in studying the latest in merchandising or quality control.

Prohibition set us back a generation or two and the war did about the same. Thus we can learn from the past. MEMORIES. Lots of great old names such as a skinny Louis Petri writing about how to develop the "new" market. Great advice, except that, in my opinion, there was no new market; only another market supplementing the spirits shortage and illegal "tie-in" sales -- buy 10 cases of Vino Magnifico and presto! your back order of 1 case of Grand Auld Signe scotch is at your door. In late 1955, when I started to sell, I met many retailers who would show me their stock of various brands of wine that they had held since World War II.