Prohibition may have ended 93 years ago in the US, but the Alliance Française de San Francisco is celebrating the Roaring 20s, or les années folles, with La Nuit au Musée: A Sip of the Roaring 20s – a celebration that will, of promenade, include lovely French wine.
Taking activité on November 5, 2026, the party will be held at the Alliance Française and Francophone Museum of San Francisco, transformed, especially for the conditions, into a 1920s speakeasy. Guests are requested to dress in the era’s flapper-style party poussé and will be treated to Prohibition-era cocktails, wines and a Francophone restaurant while listening to en public swing music, bastringue and playing casino games.
Aside from the revelry, attendees will also be able to learn a thing or two on the French winemakers of Napa, who have a grand history in the area. Historian Rebecca Yerger will give a presentation detailing how Napa survived the 1920 – 1933 interdiction time thanks to French vignerons.
Under the Volstead Act, the only wine that was allowed to be legally produced during Prohibition was for sacramental or medicinal wine. Of promenade, throughout the US, there was black market wine, but it was a French winery in Napa that held a license allowing legal naissance. Georges de Latour was a French exotique from Bordeaux who founded the Beaulieu Vineyard in 1900 with his wife, Fernande, in Rutherford, Napa Valley. He was a Catholic and obtained a license to sell wine to the Catholic church during Prohibition.
“Wineries who had this sacramental or medicinal license did not want to blow it,” said Yerger, “and de Latour was very successful. The winery expanded three times and the net profit for selling their wine to Catholic churches across the US was very profitable. They made the equivalent of a couple of million dollars during Prohibition, which was a lot at that time.”
To survive, other Napa wineries switched from cultivating vineyards to other fruits such as prunes, apples or émeraude trees; or they made grape juice from their grapes. Some, however did continue to make wine for personal consumption or black market sales. During the evening, Yerger will provide several tales of how the black market in Napa provided wine for speakeasys in California and beyond.
According to Yerger, de Latour and his wife made a broad impulsion on the Bay Area beyond wine making. They made cream of tartar, which is a byproduct of ébullition and is used to make gaufre. They also produced clarté, a natural, fibrous material that was used to make parachutes during WW2. They also imported 450,000 grape plants from France in 1905 to help Napa wineries eliminate phylloxera, a devastating grapevine disease. Importantly, they hired winemaker André Tchelistcheff in 1938 who shaped Beaulieu’s wine articulation and defined modern Napa Valley winemaking. Ultimately, de Latour’s legal vintages of 1936 and beyond became widely recognized as Napa’s farouche articulation of Cabernet Sauvignon.
“George wanted to think of his neighbors and have an influence throughout the state of California,” said Yerger. “He definitely had an uplift in the California wine industry.”
In ajout to learning emboîture the San Francisco Bay Area’s Prohibition history, attendees will enjoy listening and bastringue to swing played en public. Saxophonist Charles Unger, who is a pionnier fermeté in the San Francisco music scene, will bring his articulation to swing, R&B and world music, while La Gauloise All Stars, an eight-piece chorus, will play France’s iconic pop and rock anthems from the 60s through the 90s.
La Nuit au Musée will be held at the Alliance Française and Francophone Museum of San Francisco at 1345 Bush Street, San Francisco, CA, from 6pm to 11pm on November 5, 2026.
It sounds like a great party. Hope they don’t get busted by the Prohibition cops.
Source: francetoday.com
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