Woodcock & Grapemen

"In the Hill case in Baltimore a jury decided wine was not intoxicating even though it contained 12% alcohol. . . . Winemaking will receive little consideration from the enforcement unit. . . . The job of the Prohibition Bureau ... is to enforce the law against the big, commercial violators. . . . Wine may be made in the home for use in the home." Thus last month spoke Prohibition Director Amos Walter Wright Woodcock. He added that such wine might legally be transported.

The Wet press gloated. The tabloid New York Daily News screamed: MABEL WINS WINK FROM U. S. ON WINE! Explanation: Mrs. Mabel Walker Willebrandt, onetime Assistant Attorney General in charge of Prohibition and good friend of Director Woodcock, is counsel for Fruit Industries, Inc. Fruit Industries Inc. is an affiliate of the California Grape Control Board whose members were, at the moment when Director Woodcock spoke, harvesting a bumper grape crop of 870,000 tons, representing an investment of some $300,000,000. Of this crop 450,000 tons, enough to make 67,000,000 gal. of juice, were wine grapes. To market this vast amount, the Grape Control Board had announced in the September Produce News that it contemplated a huge advertising campaign, in which: "The trade will be contacted daily and necessary steps taken to acquaint all classes of consumers with their rights under existing laws." To finance this and other marketing projects, the Grape Control Board had obtained from the Federal Farm Board a loan of $9,000,000. Chairman Legge of the Farm Board laughed long & loud at the suggestion that he, a Federal officer, was helping to promote a leak in the Prohibition law. But it did seem as if wine were about to return to the U. S. legally and on a large scale.

Director Woodcock, however, intended no such thing. The Wet press had misinterpreted him. He had spoken of wine-making in the home, not of the sale of grapes or grapejuice for winemaking. When fortnight ago his Bureau of Prohibition Compilation obtained figures showing that all U. S. wine grapes produced last year were made into wine, that U. S. annual wine consumption has risen to 118,329,300 gal. from 52,418,430 gal. in 1914, he spoke again. He explained that any big sale of grapes for wine-making would encounter trouble from his Bureau. He said: "It is all a question of intent. . . . Even the sale of large amounts of sugar to a person known to be using it for liquor-making would be unlawful."

If this later statement disturbed hope-ful grapegrowers, they were more disturbed last week when Director Wood-cock's agents obtained indictments against nine officials of California Vineyards Co., for sending "cards and advertising matter through the mails to hundreds of thousands of prospective customers guaranteeing 'fine old wine' would be provided in accordance with the Prohibition law." Observers anticipated a legal fight between a Government-subsidized industry and the Government, predicted a sweeping Wet victory on the wine question if the California jury, like the one at Baltimore, finds the "fine old wine" non-intoxicating in fact.

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