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For Dummies is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.The not-so-noble experimentIn 1917, following years of agitation by anti-alcohol activists and the passage of prohibition laws in a number of states, the United States Congress passed the 18th Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting distribution or sale of alcohol beverages nationally. One exception: Medical purposes with a prescription only.
Two years later, after ratification by the requisite three-fourths of the states, Prohibition became the law of the land. Congress then passed the Volstead Act (the National Prohibition Enforcement Act) defining an alcohol beverage as any liquid containing more than 0.5 percent alcohol.
The result was an increase in crime as Americans in general said, “No way,” to what President Herbert Hoover called “the Noble Experiment.” Americans did their drinking at home or in speakeasies (nightclubs hidden behind locked doors, opened only to a secret password such as “Joe sent me”). Alcohol was shipped in surreptitiously by bootleggers sneaking across the country’s seacoasts or its northern or southern borders. Worse yet, there was also an increase in illness due to the fact that much of the alcohol making its way into America’s drinking glasses and teacups was unregulated, unsafe, and sometimes deadly.
By 1933, the country had had enough: On December 5, the 21st Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, repealing the 18th, and Americans could once again legally enjoy alcohol beverages, including those of the distilled variety.
New rules for better timesThe bad news about Prohibition is that it increased crime and reduced the safety of alcohol beverages. The good news is that after the country recovered from its dry spell, the federal government sat down to write the Alcohol Administration Act on what exactly constituted a specific spirit.
Since then, other countries and economic entities such as the European Union have followed suit. As a result, when you buy Scotch whisky or Bourbon or any other distilled spirit from a recognized distiller anywhere in the world, you know that you’re getting a standardized, reliable product.
If you want to know every single little detail about what makes a distilled spirit a whiskey, say, or a vodka, every single fact is available online at www.atf.treas.gov/regulations/27cfr5.html. If your eyes glaze at the very thought of making your way through government-ese, you can find a slightly more user-friendly version posted online by an organization called The Online Distillery Network for Distilleries & Fuel Ethanol Plants Worldwide at www.distill.com/specs/USA10.html.
Or you can read the clear descriptions in the next section, which lays out the basics minus the boring factoids only distillers really need to know to make sure their product meets U.S. standards. And of course, each chapter in this book is devoted to a specific spirit and presents the important facts about the drink. In essence, the take-away points are:
No, a distiller can’t just pour some ethanol into a bottle and call it whiskey or one of the other popular distilled spirits.
Yes, when you buy your favorite brand, you’re getting a standardized product that meets all the relevant government standards.
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For Dummies is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.