No, this is not my grandmothers' homemade wines. I took this photo in June at a wine shop in Cortona, Tuscany. It was one of our excursions during the writers' retreat I attended in Italy last summer.
In honor of Halloween, genealogist Amy Johnson Crow's "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" project challenges participants this week to write on the theme of Spirits. I don't really believe in ghosts, though I try to keep an open mind. So I'm taking this week's entry in a different direction.
I remember being told as a child that my grandmothers used to make their own booze. At the time, I just assumed that everyone did that, back in the old days. Now I realize they were probably talking about illicit activities during Prohibition. My grandparents were all the children of Italian immigrants, so making their own was probably a longstanding family tradition.
My paternal grandmother told me she used to stomp grapes in her cellar to make homemade wine. She said she wore special white boots to do it. Being a child of the 1970s who always wanted fashionable white patent-leather boots, that's I imagined her wearing knee-high go-go boots that would have been right in style on American Bandstand. In reality, I'm now guessing she wore some sort of carefully sterilized white rubber boots, designed for the purpose. I wish now that I'd asked her more about it.
My maternal grandmother also stomped grapes. I don't remember talking to her about it at all, but I do remember my mother mentioning it. This grandmother, though, was a more strait-laced sort who would have been embarrassed to admit to breaking the law. So we never discussed her grape-stomping footwear. By the time my parents were born, prohibition was ending, but my grandmothers continued to make their own. The family stories were always about my grandmothers, though. I never heard of my grandfathers taking part.
Both grandmothers made other types of booze, as well. For medicinal purposes, they probably would have said. But Italians have never had a big taboo about drinking. Despite the prevalence of wine-drinking, in particular, in Italian and Italian-American society -- or maybe because of its integration into everyday life -- Italians also have a particularly low incidence of alcoholism. My ancestors probably thought Prohibition was silly, and saw no reason why they should not make their own alcohol, even if they saw no need to advertise the fact.
By the time of my earliest memories of my grandmothers, the grape-stomping was in the past, and they bought wine and liquor at the store, like everyone else.
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