The 18th Amendment was repealed over 85 years ago. What a great excuse to celebrate – join us for our annual Repeal Day Party  in the Elk Cove wine cellar.

The end of prohibition is also an excuse for us to delve into a bit of the family history of Elk Cove cofounders Pat and Joe Campbell:

Pat’s great grandparents were Swiss farmers and winemakers in Helvetia, Oregon in the early 1900s. Did they make wine during Prohibition? If you were a subsistence farmer with 4 kids, 12 grandkids and 5 acres of Chasselas grapevines, what would you do?

One popular option for Prohibition-era winemakers: bricks of wine, dehydrated blocks of grape-juice to reconstitute at home. Blech!

Meanwhile, Joe’s uncle Clyde Cordner toured the midwest giving rousing speeches on the evils of alcohol as a prominent temperance advocate.

Clyde’s vision of an alcohol-free utopia wasn’t realized, but decades later his nephew fell for the descendent of (alleged) bootleggers. In the early 1970’s Pat and Joe Campbell joined other “Oregon Wine Pioneers” to revitalize Oregon’s long lost wine industry.

So let’s raise a glass and be thankful we’re not drinking brick wine, bathtub gin or swill. Cheers!