Prohibition and the Sacramental Wine Loophole

When the Eighteenth Amendment took effect in January nineteen twenty, it did not prohibit wine. It prohibited intoxicating beverages. Congress, in drafting the Volstead Act that gave Prohibition its enforcement teeth, carved out two exceptions that would prove consequential for this valley.

The first: wine produced for sacramental purposes was legal to make and sell. Catholic masses require communion wine. Jewish Passover Seders require wine. The law permitted its production and distribution to religious organizations.

The second: households were permitted to produce up to two hundred gallons per year of what the law called non-intoxicating cider and fruit juices. Grape growers in Napa Valley understood immediately that home winemakers across America were now their primary market. Napa Valley grape prices actually rose during the first years of Prohibition, as the demand for fresh wine grapes from home producers proved more robust than anyone had predicted.

Beringer Vineyards, which had been operating continuously on this land since eighteen seventy-six, survived the next thirteen years almost entirely on its federal sacramental wine license. The winery produced communion wine for Catholic parishes and wine for Jewish congregations across California. Several other Napa and Sonoma wineries held similar licenses. The trade in sacramental wine expanded during Prohibition in ways that strained the premise of the exemption; contemporaries noted that the number of practicing communicants seemed to increase with the price of sacramental wine.

When Prohibition ended on December fifth, nineteen thirty-three, the wineries with sacramental licenses had their buildings, their barrels, and their equipment. Most of the industry's skilled winemakers, trained vineyard workers, and established market relationships were gone. The revival took another generation. Beringer, which survived because a bishop needed communion wine, is still the oldest continuously operating winery in Napa Valley.