These days only the bees are abuzz at once-busy pre-Prohibition winery
An old wooden barn on Mills Lane — its redwood siding buckling and sawdust insulation exposed to the elements while a hive of industrious bees flies in and out — still retains the aura of its former life as bonded winery No. 955.
The barn is what remains of the family winery where Swiss immigrant David Molinari once made a vineyard blend from grapes grown on his 28-acre farm. The winery’s crusher and presses, for all practical purposes, were silenced during the 13-plus years of Prohibition (1920-1933). The nine 700-gallon storage tanks cellered under the main house rest unused on redwood planks supported by cement blocks. No. 955 was a small, family winery whose story was echoed, to one degree or another, by other Napa Valley wineries when Prohibition became the law of the land.
Prohibition had its start in 1893 with the founding of the Anti-Saloon League by Howard Hyde Russell. Two years later it had become a national organization with a number of wealthy supporters and a proposal to ban the sale and manufacture of all alcoholic beverages. What the league hoped would become the 18th Amendment was stalled on several occasions but picked up steam during the first world war. President Woodrow Wilson’s 1917 war food control bill stipulated that all agricultural products were to be used for the war effort only and not for alcohol.
California congressmen managed to win a two-year reprieve for wine and beer, and after the armistice was signed in 1918, vintners were confident they would be back in business. It wasn’t to be.
The brief reprieve was to end in June 1919, but the 18th Amendment was ratified that year in January. The message to brewers and vintners was reinforced by the October passage of the Volstead Act, Prohibition’s enforcement arm, which defined “intoxicating liquor.” Everything was in place when the 18th Amendment went into effect in January 1920, ushering in what local historian Lin Weber would later call, “a Jekyll and Hyde world.”
Prohibition was five years old when David Molinari’s grandson, Peter Jr., was born. The youngster was nearly 5 when the stock crash of 1929 sent the country into a Depression.
At the start of Prohibition, his grandfather, like other local growers, had tried shipping his grapes to the East Coast so families there, who were allowed 200 gallons of wine a year, could make their own wine. Grapes were shipped in small wooden crates and packed in box cars cooled by blocks of ice, the closest thing to refrigerated cars at the time. One year he was told he shouldn’t expect payment — his grapes had been temporarily “lost” and by the time they reached their destination, were spoiled. There was no way to verify the truth of it and David Molinari eventually replaced a good portion of his vines with prune and walnut trees, put in a vegetable garden and raised chickens, his grandson said.
The Swiss immigrant, who had come to St. Helena in the late 1800s because there was no way to make a living in his home country, turned his St. Helena property into a subsistence farm. Every member of the family — and the ocassional neighbor — pitched in.
“We worked as a family,” Peter Molinari said. “My sister, Marilyn and I had our chores. I kept the woodbox full every night. We gathered eggs in the afternoon. I helped my dad with the vineyard chores, those I could do. As a child we just assumed that’s the way life was. We didn’t know anything different or better.”
Prohibition tales
Although Peter Molinari was 8 when Prohibition was repealed, there were still family stories floating around. He remembers his uncles telling him about a run-in his other grandfather, Michael Heitz, had with revenuers. The Calistogan had a vineyard and made his own wine but one year apparently had more than his allotment.
“The revenuers came in and made him knock the bung out of the barrel and have it run out on the ground,” Molinari said.
During an interview four years ago Bruno Bartolucci, who grew up in Oakville, had a Prohibition tale to tell as well. In 1924 his family owned a home, the old August Jeanmonod winery, a small restaurant they called Ysidro and a service station at the Oakville Cross Road. The sheriff at the time was sure Bartolucci’s father, Andy, was selling wine and “jackass” brandy to patrons. His mother, Guillama, however, was the only one there when the sheriff and his deputies arrived with warrants, and eventually the case against them was dismissed. The Bartoluccis tore down the restaurant. A fire later destroyed their home, the service station and winery.
Arrests, fines
The St. Helena Star recounted this and a number of run-ins, arrests and fines of Napa Valley residents. In 1922, Maurizio Mori of St. Helena’s Depot Saloon was arrested and fined $800.
In 1923, 17 men were arrested and nine barrels of wine, a case of what was described as real Scotch whiskey, dozens of bottles of liquor were confiscated. Among those arrested were Joe Nolasco, A. Nichelini, Joe Baldocchi, A. Negri and Maurizio Mori who shelled out a total of $6,600 in fines.
A year later 21 men and a women were arrested in connection with a collection of six stills tucked in the underbrush by a stream along Angwin’s Ink Grade. The final line-up included familiar names: Theodore Arighi, Joe Bianchi, A. Nichelini, Charles Tucker and Joe Yudnich.
In 1924 the proprietor of the Hotel St. Helena was arrested for selling liquor. Calistoga restaurants were raided, as well as a “resort,’ actually a speakeasy, on Diamond Mountain Road.
Sacramental wines
Others in the Valley at first took less confrontational approaches to Prohibition.
Beaulieu’s Georges de Latour was prepared to make sacramental wines and sell wine as an additive for curing tobacco. At Greystone, not only were labels made describing the California Wine Association’s wine as “sacramental,” the winery was gearing up as a grape juice business.
John Wheeler also readied to enter the grape juice business but by 1923, convinced Prohibition was here to stay, he demolished his Zinfandel Lane winery.
Theodore Gier turned to producing vinegar. The Beringers built a dehydrator and dried their grapes, using the raisins to make bricks that could be reconstituted — just add water, sugar and wait a week. (In 1928 Beringer manager Fred Abruzzini came up with a plan to pack prunes and apricots in extra sweet sherry and port. Other California wineries followed suit.) Some wineries made grape concentrate or syrup.
In the early days of Prohibition, wineries were locked down and their stock of wine counted and measured. One family’s private collection was wrapped in chicken wire, but as the years passed wine continued to flow. With the “Roaring ’20s” came an unexpected outcome: In 1917-1918 about 60 million gallons of wine were being produced. In 1925 Congressional investigators put the number at an estimated 156.6 million gallons of wine fermenting.
And although the country had seen a proliferation of soda shops and coffee houses, there were now an even greater number of nightclubs, speakeasies and bootleggers — as well as a dramatic rise in alcohol-related deaths and the spreading influence of organized crime. The noble experiment was failing and an anti-Prohibition movement was gaining strength.
5-1 vote for Repeal
Then in 1928, the price of grapes plunged. The following spring brought a heavy frost that wiped out most of the Valley’s prune and walnut crops. In October, the stock market crashed and borrowing and prices rose; by November 1932 there were breadlines in every town. Many saw Prohibition as the cause of the nation’s ills and the well-heeled supporters of the Anti-Saloon League began drifting away.
By the time Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in 1933 the anti-Prohibition forces were gaining strength. In June, 1933 Napa County voted for Repeal 5-1. Statewide the numbers were 4-1. Repeal seemed inevitable.
In the vineyards there was a flurry of activity as vintners and growers prepared for the 1933 harvest and the end of Prohibition. A far-sighted Louis Martini was just finishing his cellars in St. Helena. The Bisceglia brothers were restoring the cooperage at Greystone cellars and bringing in new tanks. Louis Stralla leased the Krug winery and produced its first wine since 1922.
There were 120 wineries in Napa County at the advent of the 18th Amendment. Three years after Repeal there were only 40 in operation, but now, on the 75th anniversary of Repeal, there are an estimated 340 wineries.
The Molinari family, which made wine until 1945, went on to sell their grapes to Krug and Martini, then joined the Sunny St. Helena Cooperative, where the grapes were bought by C. Mondavi and Sons. Now their grapes go to Frogs Leap.
In his recent recollections Molinari wrote that the years of Prohibition “were indeed times of uncertainty and frustration for many Napa Valley grape growers and challenged their ability to survive as growers.”
And many met that challenge.