National Prohibition in the United States began in 1920. Section 6 of the Volstead Act exempted wine for sacramental purposes or like religious rites, and permits allowed authorised rabbis, ministers and priests to distribute it to their congregations. Congregants could buy up to ten gallons a year from authorised dealers.
The exemption quickly became a loophole. Rabbis submitted membership lists to Prohibition officials to obtain permits, and in some states a petition with ten signatures was enough to be recognised as a rabbi. Invented congregations were assembled from city directories and telephone books; in 1922 a San Francisco newspaper reported wine issued to Irish, Swedish and Greek residents under names such as Goldstein and Levinsky.
The volumes tell the story. By 1924 nearly nine million gallons of sacramental wine were being distributed nationally, roughly a gallon for every Jewish man, woman and child in the country, and in New York distributions tripled between 1922 and 1925. The Reform rabbinate ruled that grape juice was an acceptable alternative for all religious needs.
In 1926 the new Prohibition chief, General Lincoln C. Andrews, closed the wine stores, voided existing permits and required rabbis to appear in person; within a few years distributions fell below 400,000 gallons. When Prohibition ended in 1933, producers who had kept supplying sacramental wine were ready to expand, and the sweet Concord style they made defined American kosher wine for decades.
NextJewish wine merchants in Germany before 1933