Tempest in a Bottle

A formless mash of newspaper words finally distilled itself last week into headlines like this:

PUBLIC GOUGED ON LIQUOR PRICE;

QUALITY VILE, ANALYSIS SHOWS

A nasty indictment--but who was the villain? There was much loose talk of a wicked Whiskey Trust, but none of the indignant publicists would give its name or address.

Prices. As everyone knows, prices go up when demand far outruns supply. And as everyone knows, there was never any possibility that U. S. demand could be immediately supplied except by unrestricted importation from abroad. But already National Distillers Products Corp. has begun to label its wares with the prices which public should pay retailer. And last week President Harold Jacobi of Schenley cheerfully announced:

"I feel confident that within the first six months of 1934 the entire legal liquor industry will have settled down to normalcy. . . . The hectic condition that prevailed at the time of Repeal was unavoidable."

Quality, Of more permanent interest and much more complicated is the question of liquor quality. Nowhere did the tempest of liquor controversy howl louder than in New York City. Health Commissioner Shirley W. Wynne, retiring with a bang to set up an analysis bureau of his own and to serve as adviser to Kings Brewery at $15,000 a year, had examined samples of spirits being sold in his jurisdiction, found many brands mislabeled, a few unpotable. He forthwith ordered that straight whiskey be labeled straight whiskey, blends be labeled blends (with percentages of alcohol &whiskey stated on the label), imitations be labeled imitations (with ingredients stated).* Medicinal whiskey, said Dr. Wynne, must be the stimulant which the U. S. Pharmacopoeia and the Food & Drugs Act of 1906 specify as "an alcoholic liquid obtained by the distillation of a fermented mash of wholly or partly malted cereal grains, containing not less than 47% and not more than 53% by volume of alcohol at 15.56DEG Centigrade. It must have been stored in charred wooden containers for a period of not less than four years." The labeling, ordered Dr. Wynne, would have to be done by Jan. 5.

Already harried by the complexities of state regulations, no two sets of which are alike, distillers turned to Washington and the administrator of their code authority, Dr. James M. Doran, longtime Commissioner of Industrial Alcohol. Dr. Doran, since 1927 the Government's contact man with the liquor business, spoke out for the distillers:

"We object to the practice which now prevails where boards in several states meet and decide in five minutes the age-old question: What is whiskey? . . . Ill-considered and hasty attempts made by various local authorities to determine what is whiskey and how it should be labeled will result only in turning the entire market over to the bootleggers and to foreign manufacturers."

In the U. S. there were on Dec. 6, 2,000,000 gal. of straight whiskey. To make this meet the national thirst, some sort of dilution was obviously required. It could be done by blending, i. e., adding immature whiskeys and alcohol. Imitation whiskey could be made by adding whiskey flavoring to alcohol and water. Blending is not as horrid a word as Dr. Wynne and the popular Press were leading drinkers to believe. Much pre-Prohibition liquor was blended, made a satisfactory product if left alone in a charred keg for 90 days. And except in the Highlands, there is no Scotch sold anywhere in the world that has not had alcohol or grain spirits added to it.

*Last week the Evening Post front-paged a picture of Shirley Wynne Jr. at the counter of his liquor store. Gaily twitted the Post: OH, DR. WYNNE! YOUR SON SOLD US THREE PINTS OF THAT WHISKEY YOU CALLED PHONY.

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