Latest / Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood / Bittisode 005: Wonderful Wine Bricks

Transcript

Bittisode 005: Wonderful Wine Bricks · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to an airwave media podcast.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Oh the world is always on, but you shouldn't be.
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  Speaker 1: Hi everybody, and welcome back to Who Did What Now?
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: The history podcast that's not your history class. Betty Suid
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: with me your content host, Katie Charlwood, Spectacle and reader
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: of books. So it's the bitisode with the bits that
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  Speaker 1: don't really belong anywhere else. So I want to talk
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  Speaker 1: about something this week which I talk about all the time,
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  Speaker 1: and I am unnaturally obsessed with I don't know why
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  Speaker 1: I've always you know, I actually know why I'm obsessed
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  Speaker 1: with this because so like when I was studying history
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  Speaker 1: in college, we were studying American history in the early
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: twentieth century, and when it got to the point about
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: American history between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: it's incredibly depressing. Like I don't know if you've ever
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: studied we have slavery, the world wars, the Great Depression,
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  Speaker 1: the Holocaust, everything is fucking awful. Even before that, we
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  Speaker 1: have like the annihilation of the Native people of America,
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  Speaker 1: Like it is fucking atrocious. Like studying history, it can
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  Speaker 1: really crush you, especially if you study it from a
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  Speaker 1: perspective of people, like you care about people, not just
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: like stuff like I saw a thing on TikTok when
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  Speaker 1: it's like what about you? What about your interests? Makes
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: people think you're interested in something, but you're absolutely fucking not.
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  Speaker 1: And honestly, battles for the most part, I don't give
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  Speaker 1: a fuck about battles because generally in history, when people
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  Speaker 1: talk about battles, all they care about are names, places, dates,
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  Speaker 1: But there's no person who's attached to it. It's all
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  Speaker 1: vague in grandiose, and I have no fucking interest in it,
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  Speaker 1: like I care about people. It's why I usually don't
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  Speaker 1: care about the names. So like, even though I'm really
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  Speaker 1: into true crime, I have such trouble remembering the names
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  Speaker 1: of like serial killers and stuff because I'm completely disinterested
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  Speaker 1: in their names because I think they are irrelevant. What
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  Speaker 1: I do think is relevant are the lives they snuffed out,
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  Speaker 1: and that's what I'm interested in. That's why I don't
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  Speaker 1: give a flat who Jack the Ripper was, This has
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  Speaker 1: been hood what now, and I have been Kerrie Charlwood
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  Speaker 1: ranting host apparently. Yeah, so I am obsessed with wine bricks.
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  Speaker 1: They're also known as grape bricks and grape blocks. I
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  Speaker 1: know what you're thinking.
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  Speaker 3: Please quit your jibber jabber in fact me, in fact you,
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  Speaker 3: I will, but I'm gonna get my source on. My
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  Speaker 3: first source is the History of North America from eighteen
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  Speaker 3: seventy five to nineteen seventy five, which is part of
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  Speaker 3: my studies from college. Also, I have vinepair dot com,
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  Speaker 3: Grape Collective dot com, and of course Smithsonian dot com. Okay,
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  Speaker 3: so prohibition, that thing we all fucking despise, I went
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  Speaker 3: into effect on January sixteenth, nineteen twenty. So the Volsted Act,
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  Speaker 3: it basically met that you could not produce and sell
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  Speaker 3: alcohol unless it was for like sacramental wine for church
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  Speaker 3: then they were fine, like sorry, And as we covered
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  Speaker 3: in our Prohibition Poisonings episode, the Volstead Act basically states
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  Speaker 3: that you cannot produce and sell alcohol for consumption, like
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  Speaker 3: unless you're making sacramental wine for churches, that's fine.
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  Speaker 1: Otherwise it's it's not legal. You can't do that in
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  Speaker 1: the US. And you could produce alcohol if it was
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  Speaker 1: used for something like wood varnish or pent thinner like
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  Speaker 1: you could produce ethanol, but just not anything drinkable. So
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  Speaker 1: in places like Napa Valley, who were making the majority
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  Speaker 1: of America's wine, they faced a wee bit of a
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  Speaker 1: dilemma because they couldn't make any fucking wine. The vineyards
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  Speaker 1: they were like shit. The vineyards had what some might
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  Speaker 1: call a conundrum. Their options were either rip up their
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  Speaker 1: plants and plant something else in the meantimes, try and
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  Speaker 1: make money trying to make money some other way, or
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  Speaker 1: leave things as they are, or continue going grapes and
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  Speaker 1: not make anything. They're issues were because if they tear
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  Speaker 1: the thing is, if they destroy their venes, it's going
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  Speaker 1: to take them at least a decade once they're replanted
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  Speaker 1: to like start producing good quality grapes again. So some
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  Speaker 1: of the nerds they're like, fuck this for a game
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  Speaker 1: of soldiers. We're just tearing everything up. We're going to
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  Speaker 1: plant some orchards when we need the money. We need
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  Speaker 1: to do something now. Others went for an alternative route,
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  Speaker 1: And this is why I love genius out the box thinking.
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  Speaker 1: So so the voles did at didn't stop the growing
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  Speaker 1: of grapes, just that grapes could not be used in
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  Speaker 1: the production of alcohol. So again, unless it's for sacramental wine,
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  Speaker 1: in which case Matty Golden, it's fine. So like, basically,
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  Speaker 1: if somebody grew grapes they knew were going to be
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  Speaker 1: used for alcohol, or someone turned grapes into alcohol, they'd
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  Speaker 1: both go to jail. But if the person growing the grapes,
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  Speaker 1: make sure you know that there's a warning so that
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  Speaker 1: people know that these grapes are not to be used
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  Speaker 1: for the creation of alcohol. And like if they passed
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  Speaker 1: from pillar to post enough that you couldn't follow where
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  Speaker 1: they came from, it's fine. So the person who grows
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  Speaker 1: the grapes can't be like, can't knowingly know the bootlegger's
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  Speaker 1: bootleg in the boots. Also, in addition, furthermore, the law
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  Speaker 1: also states that you know that those who are growing
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  Speaker 1: grapes can make juice and just concentrate. Again only if
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  Speaker 1: these are like non alcoholic, so if they wanted to,
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  Speaker 1: the vineyards could still make non alcoholic wine. And also
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  Speaker 1: ensure that there was a label, a warning label that
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  Speaker 1: said don't make wine. This is not for wine. Then
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  Speaker 1: they're good, And so came the creation ingenuity outside the
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  Speaker 1: box thinking fish bush bosh, wine bricks also known as
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  Speaker 1: grape bricks, also known as great blocks, but are like
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  Speaker 1: wine bricks best. So the wine brick. It was basically
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  Speaker 1: this block of concentrated grape juice, which you know if
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  Speaker 1: someone had the intention to without the grower's knowledge, which
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  Speaker 1: you know. So with each wine brick there was a
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  Speaker 1: little label, a warning label, which basically said, do not
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  Speaker 1: dissolve this concentrated grape block in a gallon of water,
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  Speaker 1: and absolutely do not, under any circumstances leave that jug
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  Speaker 1: of water and grape concentrate in a cool cupboard for
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  Speaker 1: twenty one days or it will turn into wine and
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  Speaker 1: we don't want that to happen. But it wasn't the
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  Speaker 1: only warning on the label. Oh no, they made sure
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  Speaker 1: to involve the probition legislation, saying that consuming homemade wine
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  Speaker 1: for your personal use up to two hundred gallons of
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  Speaker 1: it is absolutely fine. It's legal, just as long as
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  Speaker 1: this wine doesn't leave your house. If it stays inside
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  Speaker 1: your house, it's fine. Some of the vineyards that were
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  Speaker 1: creating these wine bricks added an extra wee bit. Some
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  Speaker 1: companies like Venosano, they wanted to be like extra clear
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  Speaker 1: and make sure that there was no confusion. So they
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  Speaker 1: would even tell them that they were making like a
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  Speaker 1: Raaisling or Clara or barkanday, and you know they should
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  Speaker 1: be careful because they don't want to make you know,
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  Speaker 1: this is what could happen if you allow this to ferment.
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  Speaker 1: And basically, wine bricks single handedly save the American wine
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  Speaker 1: industry because when prohibition ends, the demand for grapes doesn't
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  Speaker 1: fall because only a select like because you know, there
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  Speaker 1: isn't enough vineyards out there, because you know, a lot
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  Speaker 1: of the vineyards ripped up their vines, like they don't
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  Speaker 1: have the grapes, they're not growing them. So the ones
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  Speaker 1: that were left, the ones that were doing this because
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  Speaker 1: they were the only ones left. They were they were
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  Speaker 1: the only ones able to produce wine. Like the wine
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  Speaker 1: that was made from the wine bricks wasn't exactly the
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  Speaker 1: best of wine, but you know it didn't pinch. But yeah,
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  Speaker 1: thanks to prohibition, some wine makers got very very rich.
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  Speaker 1: And that is the story of winebricks. Fucking love winebrix.
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  Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite things in history that doesn't
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  Speaker 1: involve like an actual person, our true crime, which is good.
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  Speaker 1: It's nice to have something a little bit lighter after
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  Speaker 1: last week's monkey scenario. So if you liked my retelling
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  Speaker 1: of the Wine Bricks tale, feel free to rate and
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  Speaker 1: review five stars on Apple Podcasts. Say something nice about me,
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  Speaker 1: why don't you? You may as well. I love you forever.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to this, biddysode. And this is
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  Speaker 1: something I have literally wanted to talk about for so long.
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  Speaker 1: So I actually recorded versions of this a couple of times,
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  Speaker 1: but I lost the recordings. I don't know what I did.
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  Speaker 1: They're gone. But anyway, I just love Winebrix. I love
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  Speaker 1: Winebrix like I love them so much. But I thank
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  Speaker 1: you for listening to the story with me. If you
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  Speaker 1: want to follow me, I'm doing more stuff on Instagram
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  Speaker 1: now just because I feel like it, and so there's
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: going to be some fun history facts, going to be
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: some videos about stuff I'll probably do on Instagram TV soon,
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  Speaker 1: do a live maybe if you're interested. If you want
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  Speaker 1: me to, just let me know and you can. You
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  Speaker 1: can message me and contact me on like Instagram and
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  Speaker 1: Twitter and Facebook, and I will chat to you then,
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  Speaker 1: and with that I'm going to bid you very well.
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  Speaker 1: Adios oil for WA does em my friends a bibe