US: The State We're in: 80 Years Since Repeal

(Wine-Searcher) - President Franklin Roosevelt called it “a damnable affliction,” but 80 years after the repeal of Prohibition, it’s estimated that 16 million Americans still live in dry areas.

On December 5, 1933, 13 years after Prohibition outlawed alcohol in the United States, Roosevelt ratified the 21st Amendment, overturning the 18th Amendment that had created it. Earlier that year, the president had signed the Cullen-Harrison Act, which allowed the production and sale of beer, famously declaring: “I think this would be a good time for a beer.”

Some states continued Prohibition until the last of them repealed the law in 1966. Yet, there still remain hundreds of dry counties across the country. According to Dr David J. Hanson, professor emeritus of sociology at the State University of New York at Potsdam, 16 million Americans still live under dry laws.

And the legacy of Prohibition lives on in restrictive shipping laws. Free The Grapes, a national organization that seeks to remove restrictions in states which still prohibit consumers from purchasing wines directly from wineries and retailers, sees progress but there's still some way to go.

Jeremy Benson, executive director of Free The Grapes, told Wine-Searcher: "In 1998, there were 17 states that allowed wineries to ship to the consumer and now it's 41. Those 41 states represent 90 percent of wine consumption in the U.S."

There are still states in the U.S. which do not allow direct-to-consumer wine shipping, including Massachusetts, Utah, Oklahoma and Kentucky, and Benson added: "We have not 'freed' all the grapes – we are not quite there yet but we getting close."

Earlier this year, the American Wine Consumer Coalition produced a state-by-state report card of access to wine. It found that California was the best place to live for wine lovers, while 36 states still banned the shipment of wine from out-of-state retailers and 17 forbade the sale of wine in supermarkets.