Wine Grapes and Prohibition
By G. D. BALLOU, M. D.
What Shall We Do with Our Grapes if Prohibition Carries? — Some Common Sense Suggestions on the Point
WHAT shall become of the grape juice? The real question is, What ought to be done with it? It is one of the most valuable medicinal foods. There is nothing better, unless for a few cases it might be apple juice. Each glass of grape juice contains as much force element as an ordinary meal of common foods. Besides, the anti-septic properties and the lack of bone-making material make it indispensable in the cure of chronic catarrh of the bowels, sprew, and arthritis deformans. Fruit juices are an absolute cure for the last named disease in its early stages, and there is no other remedy. The grape cure has become so popular in Europe that many people go annually to the south of Germany and live for weeks on grapes alone. Many chronic ailments are permanently relieved in this way. The only thing that stands in the way of making a sale for ten times the present supply of grape juice, even if none were left to ferment into wine, is the price at which it is retailed at soft drink stands. California produces about 50,000,000 gallons of fresh grape juice annually. All the rest of the United States produces not far from 15,000,000 gallons. This would make less than three quarts of fresh pure grape juice per capita for the entire country. Now, if you want to get a good, cold drink of pure grape juice at any of the places where it is sold, you will have to pay ten cents for a glass that holds from one half to two thirds as much as an ordinary table glass. If you want a quart of it, you will pay from thirty-five to fifty cents for what is termed in commerce a "short" quart, five of which make a gallon. This pinched system of measurement gives about twenty-five drinks to the gallon, which, at ten cents each, equals at retail $2.50 a gallon. This is absolutely prohibitive for the common people, as either a necessity or a luxury. WINE GRAPES AND UNFERMENTED WINE
The ordinary table glass holds one half pint, making sixteen to the full gallon. If this were sold at five cents a glass, it would retail at eighty cents a gallon — quite a change from present prices. The present supply of unfermented wine is chiefly made from the Concord grape. But there is no reason whatever why the juice of our wine and table grapes can not be made as palatable for the great majority of tastes, by the addition of a little lime or lemon juice, as the Concord juice now is, in the way it is prepared. There is more force and food element in the California grape juice than in the Eastern Concord, and all it needs for the most fastidious is some slight flavoring with other fruit juice. The impression prevails that the Concord grape can not be grown successfully in southern California. The writer desires to say that he has in his yard here in Los Angeles the absolute proof that the Concord grape is a success in southern California, or anywhere in this locality. Spreading out over about two hundred square feet of trellis is a five-year-old Concord vine that will produce this year, at the least calculation, two hundred and fifty pounds of the finest flavored fruit ever eaten. The unfermented juice from last year's crop will bear diluting with one third its bulk of distilled water, and then have a higher, more delicious flavor than any Eastern Concord grape juice in the market. ELIMINATE THE LIQUOR LEAGUE
We have had about fifty years of intelligent experience in preserving fruit for health drinks; and we do not hesitate to declare that if the influence of the California Liquor League were eliminated from the present controversy, and that greed which stimulates the liquor dealer to produce almost every kind of wine from poor whisky by artificial processes were trampled under foot, within a year our wineries would be putting their fresh grape juice in sealed gallons and quarts and disposing of it at a better profit than they now make. To produce the demand, all that is necessary is to supply the soft drink stands, so that it can be had at the liberal rate suggested in this article. THE WINE PRODUCERS CRUSHED
The wholesale liquor interests who are working through the "Liquor League" and the "Grape Growers' Protective Association" are so greedy for gold that they have almost ground the life out of the real wine producers. I am informed, on good authority, that wine is sold in small quantities at the wineries from fifteen to twenty-five cents a gallon in all parts of this state. Just popularize grape juice by offering it at all the soft drink stands at a popular price, and the wine producers will be won over readily by a price from twenty to one hundred per cent higher than they are now getting. Add to the present wine supply about one fifth, which is lost in evaporation during fermentation, and you have a most remarkable inducement to grape growers to make unfermented instead of fermented wine. Pure grape juice is more attractive to the average palate than the flavored waters that are so commonly dispensed. There is not enough grape juice produced to supply one half the demand that will exist in less than three years from the time it shall be offered at the fair rate of five cents for a half-pint glass. The dealers who are not satisfied with the profit that could be made at this rate had better give place to scores of others who would be fully satisfied with a hundred per cent profit. And there is not a thing on earth to-day that will deal heavier blows to the perverted appetites that now clamor for strong stimulants, than the grape and other fruit juices that could be so easily provided if those who produce them were disposed to do it. There is a blessing in the new wine. "Destroy it not."