DOTD For Tuesday, October 28, 2025

A Mocktail With A Lesson For Today

Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is a mocktail called the Volstead Act, inspired by the passage of Prohibition on October 28, 1919. As a bar, in general, we’re not in favor of banning alcohol - or fun. But it’s a moment in history that’s worth looking at, given our current situation.

At the end of the 1910s, the temperance movement was running strong, driven in part by groups like The Anti-Saloon League. After World War I, (1914-1918), anti-immigrant prejudice & suspicion of foreigners exploded across the U.S. The Anti-Saloon League used that hatred to push the right-wing idea that drinking was a pro-German & pro-immigrant act, which they justified by pointing to the hundreds of breweries, distilleries, and bars owned and frequented by immigrants.

That anti-immigrant wave of hatred & bigotry surged like a tidal wave through U.S. politics then, much as it is now. That hatred drove the infamous 18^thAmendment that created Prohibition to be ratified by the states in a single month, January 1919. With that out of the way, the forces of evil had one remaining step: The creation of a law to enforce the amendment. The Volstead Act was the result. The president then, Woodrow Wilson, wisely vetoed the act, but Congress overrode his veto within two days. Just goes to show you that now isn’t the only time Congress has been full of nutcases.

Millions of Americans, of course, wanted nothing to do with Prohibition and took matters into their own hands. From secret brewers & distillers, to moonshine runners & speakeasy operators, an entire underground world of organized crime - and its unregulated economy - sprang up. Much like other lucrative black markets, an enforcement regime sprang up as well, and the two fed off one another.

There were exceptions in The Volstead Act that actually fueled the abuse of the law. For example, doctors were allowed to prescribe booze for a patient. This quickly became a lucrative side business for doctors, and for the pharmacies that filled the prescriptions. During the first year of Prohibition, even before they caught onto its potential, doctors prescribed roughly eight million gallons of hooch.

The Volstead Act also allowed anyone to make 200 gallons of “non-intoxicating cider and fruit juice each year at home.” Intoxicating was defined as 0.5% alcohol, but the Internal Revenue Service struck that down, enforcement was lax. This led to open flouting of the law. In one example, a company called Fruit Industries Ltd. began producing a useful grape concentrate brick they called Vine-Glo. The package included a warning: “After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine.” The wine was probably pretty nasty.

In fact, many of the secret brewing and distilling efforts of the time ended up with alcoholic solutions that were poisonous. Bootleggers and home distillers often produced dangerous, impure liquors contaminated with highly toxic industrial solvents like methanol, that lead to severe health consequences, including permanent blindness, seizures, coma, and death.

In the end, the public came to view Prohibition as the right-wing extremist policy failure it was for multiple reasons: It led to a decrease in tax revenue at all levels, an increase in illegal activity, and it fostered corruption throughout government, all while failing to curb drinking. Franklin D. Roosevelt ran on a platform of repeal, and the 21st Amendment was ratified in 1933, overturning the 18th Amendment.

So while the Prohibition era was a dark time, in the end, America came out of it, and learned - for a time - that right-wing extremist policies are bad.

That’s a lesson any good person can drink to. So let’s do that with today’s Drink Of The Day, a Volstead Act mocktail:

Ingredients

Here’s what you’re going to need for this drink: