Searching for the Elusive "Civilized" Drinker: Wining and Dining in Post-Prohibition America

After Prohibition’s repeal, a variety of political elites, cultural commentators, and members of the alcoholic beverage and hospitality trades joined a national conversation about alcohol’s place in American life.  Such conversations often invoked European and Canadian comparisons to highlight the merits, flaws, and uniqueness of American drinking habits and to invite deeper reflection on what these habits revealed about the American character.  Could the right set of alcohol controls transform American drinkers into Europeanized beer and wine drinkers?  Or were American drinking habits so deeply ingrained that it was futile to hope Americans might abandon their liquor-loving ways?

This paper examines drinking guidebooks, food and drink columns, trade journals, and cultural commentary to assess why the wine industry, restaurateurs, and hospitality trades struggled to build a mass market for wine during the first two decades after repeal.  Overpriced wine, poor quality, persistent black markets, and the greater allure of cocktails all contributed to disappointing demand.  Some restaurateurs preferred the higher immediate profits on liquor sales to the less certain long-term gains from teaching diners to enjoy wine.  Cultural blinders further limited the industry’s ability to discern consumer desires.  In seeking a broad base of middle-class consumers, the industry embraced a limited form of cosmopolitanism that valorized wine customs in Western Europe and the ancient world but disregarded working class and ethnic traditions.  When highbrow, French-centered approaches to wine promotion backfired, some restaurateurs set their sights not on the upper crust who ordered Chateaubriand but on the average customers who ordered “Shrimp Cocktail or Tomato Juice, … Steak and French Fried Potatoes—Chicken or Turkey—a piece of pie and a cup of coffee.” In their search for the elusive American wine consumer, vintners and restaurateurs eventually struck a more populist tone but made limited progress in their “civilizing” mission.