Last weekend, we hired a car and headed up the Hudson Valley looking for some of that autumn foliage for which this part of the world is justifiably famous.
It was pretty spectacular.
We also found a wonderful story about how one clever man beat prohibition… and I’m not talking about Al Capone.
From 1920 to 1933, the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcohol was banned in the US by the Eighteenth Amendment. During this time, crime bosses like Capone made millions from the illegal trade… in the process giving us and a few fab films (who could forget Sean Connery, Robert de Nero, Kevin Costner and Andy Garcia in The Untouchables).
But not ALL the alcohol trade in those years was illegal.
In the Hudson Valley, we found Brotherhood Wines – the oldest continually producing winery in the US. They’ve been making wine for 170 years… right through prohibition.
How?
It’s a great story. The owners of the winery at the time must have seen what was coming. The winery already produced sacramental wine and had quite a stock on hand. They started providing altar wines for churches all over the state – even further afield. When prohibition came, and wineries were closed down, this winery was excused – because the churches needed their wine.
Legend speaks of a sudden increase in the number of churchmen in the area about then too.
In the underground wine vaults, we saw the locked room which was the owner’s private cellar.
There was a hidden tunnel leading from the vault to the owner’s mansion. My guess is that got a lot of use during prohibition too!
What a great story of forethought and ingenuity.
The wine wasn’t half bad either.
