Published: June 22, 2012
The cliche may be that apple pie is the most quintessentially American of foods but, in truth, hard apple cider might stake a more rightful claim to that title. Alcohol and our taste for it has shaped this country from its inception, when the founding fathers themselves played a role in encouraging our national hankering for the hard stuff: Jefferson loved his hard cider and wine, Washington had a thing for rum, and Benjamin Franklin loved it all so much he compiled a list of 228 synonyms for “drunk” into what is known as “The Drinker’s Dictionary.”
In this hour of BackStory, we’re all about the boozin’. Along the way, we ask when and why consumption and production has ebbed and flowed. We look at why rum became the drink of choice among revolutionary troops, explore why American Indians were rejecting alcohol two centuries before the rest of the country, and follow the long march toward Prohibition. Originally produced a few years ago, this episode has been revised to include new segments and reflect fresh insight into the subject.
Andy H
Your comments that age is neutral in drinking age are not scientifically valid. A summary of research into brain development and alcohol can be viewed at this page: http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/healthissues/1127400726.html the short story is that brains continue to develop into the early 20s. It can be debated that at this stage the effects of alcohol on the stage of development are dangerous or not. What is clear is that alcohol has different effects on different populations. An important part of the equation of when a person is ready is age. While we allow 18 year olds to do some things that would be compatible with drinking we can’t make blanket statements that every 18 year old is ready.
Andrew Wilson
Thanks for a great article. I’ll pass it on to my grad school prof who taught on prohibition.
The piece justly made a big deal of class and race as factors at in the growing fear of alcohol, but you unjustly played downplayed the social activist side of prohibition that wanted to protect women from abuse, and men from throwing their lives down the hatch.
A couple of points that touch my own history. The first has to do with apples, which we all know now as a healthy food (an apple a day…). One of the great anti-alcohol movements was to chop down apple orchards, the source of hard cider. My home town, Yakima, Washington, made it big when the first reservoirs in the Cascades made it possible to grow large quantities of new, sweet varieties of apples. The marketing boards had to convince Americans that apples were healthy, an not sinful.
And second, having to do with microbreweries. Part of the repeal of prohibition was regulation that limited the number of producers to a handful, and also prohibited the sale of alcohol on the premises where it was produced–the brewpub. The first brewpub after prohibition was established not until 1982, in Yakima, after Bert Grant successfully sued that these regulations were unconstitutional.
Thanks again!
Brynn Pihlaja
Distilled beverages bottled with added sugar and added flavorings, such as Grand Marnier, Frangelico, and American schnapps, are liqueurs. In common usage, the distinction between spirits and liqueurs is widely unknown or ignored; consequently, all alcoholic beverages other than beer and wine are generally referred to as spirits.”…
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