This is the 4th installment of this story.  You can find the 1st one here

I don’t completely remember when the Iowa Liquor Control Commission (ILCC) actually allowed humans to not only “see” the bottles at the state stores before they made a selection on what type of alcohol to buy, but at some point in time they actually allowed the public to walk in and pick up (touch) the individual bottles, put them into a cart and just pay for them without filling out the liquor book.  They had finally moved out of prohibition forever!

In the early 1970’s in a few large state liquor stores in bigger towns actually stocked a section with only wine on a few shelves.  Wow, so many jugs and no idea what they tasted like!  Paul Masson, Gallo, Lancer’s, good old Mogan David, etc, were the staple offerings.  I was in college at that time and everyone had to go through the ritual of getting the straw covered bottle of Chianti so you could set a colored “drip” candle in it for your dorm room.  Most guys dumped the wine instead of drinking it because it was usually really bad tasting stuff!  It was a ritual of college life you had to do.

My wife and I were married in 1970.  On one of the trips to Omaha, Nebraska, to shop in a larger city, we were in the biggest department store downtown, and we walked by a small area (about 10’ x 10’) that sold wines we had never seen before.  Nebraska was ahead of their time and could sell alcohol in public stores not owned by the state.  I guess it pays to advertize because a bottle of Paul Masson “Very Cold Duck” caught our eye.  We bought it and transported it “illegally” back to our home in Iowa.  It was actually against the law to transport “booze” across state lines at that time.

The next week end we chilled the bottle, my wife cooked a great meal and we popped the plastic stopper and drank the bubbly wine.  Guess what!  We really liked it!  Over the next few years we stopped back at that store in Omaha and bought more “cold duck” as you still could not find it in the Iowa state owned stores.

Over the first years of our marriage we did try to broaden our wine tastes.  We had such great wines such as Ripple, Boone’s Farm Wild Mountain Grape, Thunderbird and MD 20-20.  I distinctly remember my wife and I and another couple trying to get “buzzed” on Boone’s Farm wine one hot summer evening.  We drove three trips to the next town to the liquor store and all we got was “gassy’ and tired!  What fun!

A few of the wines we tried were better like some of the Rose’.  The bottom line was that we had settled into the rut of drinking cold wine that was sweet.  My wife liked it.  I didn’t.

Jim Albinger (Andrew’s dad) grew up in smalltown northwest Iowa in the 1950’s.  He has been writing down his experiences looking back at all that has shaped his current wine tasting hobby.  Expect to see more of Jim’s writings here at offthecork.com.

You can find the next installment of this story here

Tags: Iowa, liquor store, prohibition, wine

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