What's wrong with this picture?

These are the label details from the Champagne bottle I posted in the finds thread. Can you spot a discrepancy here and how do you explain it?

 

Not a wine-y (but definitely a whiner......) so the only thing that jumps out at me if the lack of an upper case F in Fifth (Avenue)

 

How did prohibition work, would this have been imported post 33?

 

In answer to, "How did Prohibition work?"

NOT VERY WELL!

 

"How did prohibition work, would this have been imported post 33?"

Bingo! I was trying to figure out how a prohibition era bottle of champagne was imported by a US distributor. Come to find out that most good champagne is aged 3-5 years before final bottling (disgorgement). Some of the best houses age 6-8 years. Perhaps this is someone's post-prohibition celebration bottle?

 

Perhaps they called it "communion wine".

 

Grew up watching the Untouchables. Nowadays I wonder why they passed the law in the first place.

 

I live very near to Lake Erie and grew up hearing the stories of the people who smuggled "booze" across the lake from Canada (Peele Island is just over 40 miles away) to Port Clinton & Catawba Island and to Wightman's Grove in Sandusky County. Some people became quite rich.

 

Who knows it might have been bootlegged in by old man Joseph "Joe" P. Kennedy, Sr. Bootlegging was the source of seed money to the Kennedy fortune. With the "seed" money, Joe made the family fortune in banking, stock market, real estate, producing movies, etc...

--- Susan

 

Another thing, the Vintners address was Rockerfeller Center. I believe Rockerfeller Center wasn't started until 1930 and not completed or opened until c1939.

--- Susan

 

Would they have imported an 11 year old bottle of Champagne?

 

Might have - you an bet the French would have been all too happy to unload a "fine, aged" bottle at a premium price.

 

Just stumbled on an interesting connection of Browne Vintners - Zwillman, the mobster - Joe P. Kennedy! Maybe Kennedy did import this bottle! It seems...

1. Browne Vintners Co. was one if not the largest liquor importing firm in the USA in the late 1930s with offices in Rockefeller Center.

2. Abner "Longie/Longy" Zwillman was a partner in the Browne-Vintners Co.
http://www.forgottenbooks.com/readb...ime_in_Interstate_Commerce_v12_1000870905/635

https://books.google.com/books?id=KZCUIxhP7ikC&pg=PA62&lpg=PA62&dq=zwillman+interest+in+Browne+vintners&source=bl&ots=IJJ2phEz9S&sig=e0ivzh0lv4mb-cfV_6ct0Y9ZV20&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCwQ6AEwBWoVChMIzfCZ576-yAIVy6MeCh3yNwid#v=onepage&q=zwillman interest in Browne vintners&f=false

3. Longie Zwillman was one of the top mobsters along with Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel, etc.

"Collier's" named Zwillman as one of the Big Six among the mobsters, the others being Louis Buchalter, Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Jacob G. Shapiro and Luciano. Zwillman was protector of
Waxey Gordon's brewery syndicates operating during Prohibition in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York."

4. Longie Zwillman bought a large liquor import business from Joe Kennedy!!!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/kennedy-wealth/

"Joe Kennedy’s money may have had unsavory sources as well. He is rumored to have imported liquor during Prohibition, working with mobsters in that industry (he later sold his legitimate liquor importing business to a known mobster named Abner “Longy” Zwillman). Joe Kennedy never publicly revealed his wealth, but the New York Times estimated his net worth at $500,000,000 when he died in 1969."

--- Susan

 

First you gotta ask...who 'they' were ?

 

I suppose I meant the dries, though I wasn't intending to personalise.

 

Last year's PBS series on Prohibition was very enlightening on the effort to ban alcohol and the reasons why the effort ultimately failed. It's a multi-part documentary so it takes a long time to see the whole thing, but worth it.

 

Susan,

Thanks for the info. I doubt this bottle had any direct connection to the mob but you never know. Southwest MI was a haven for Chicago mobsters wanting to get away from the city. It was also a haven for anyone else from Chicago with money so it could have found its way there in various ways.

 

Probably not, but any booze from that era certainly conjure up images of mob stuff and stuff. Also I doubt any Joe Kennedy connection.

I always find it interesting how relationships/connections can sometimes be made between events, people, etc. For example about a year before Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by the actor John Wilkes Booth, his older more famous actor brother Edwin Booth saved the life of Robert Lincoln, the president's oldest son and the only child that lived to adulthood. Edwin was a Lincoln supporter while his brother John Wilkes was a secessionist.

"Ironically, Edwin Booth had actually saved the life of, or at least prevented serious injury to, Lincoln’s eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln the previous year. As Lincoln and Booth were waiting at a train platform to buy sleeping cars, the train began to move and Lincoln lost his footing. According to Robert Lincoln, Edwin Booth grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back to his feet. Lincoln recognized the famous actor and thanked him for his efforts, and Lincoln recalled the incident several times in writing and in conversation, although Booth did not know the name of the man he had saved until years later. It was less than a year after this event that Booth’s brother took the life of Lincoln’s father."

Just another example of my obsession of historical trivia.

--- Susan

 

Hi Susan,
Did you know that Lincoln's son was present at the next two assassinations of presidents?
greg

 

WHAT!!??