How Welch’s Grape Juice Was Invented as a Non-Alcoholic Alternative During Prohibition

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Prohibition was a well-intentioned government plan intended to deal with several issues in the early 20th century. It aimed to reduce crime and corruption, address strained family relations, and ease the tax burden of prisons and poorhouses.

Unfortunately, the “great social and economic experiment” President Herbert Hoover referred to had unintended consequences like bootlegging, gang wars, and the shuttering of taverns and restaurants, causing a loss in tax revenue. Though the banning of the manufacture, transportation, and sale of intoxicating liquors included in the 18th Amendment didn’t have the desired effect, that likely would not have made a difference to a strict teetotaler like Thomas Welch.

Thomas Bramwell Welch, founder of Welch’s Grape Juice, late 19th century. Public Domain

Man on a Mission

Creative, innovative, and passionate about his faith, the English-born American Thomas Bramwell Welch joined the Wesleyan Methodist Church at age 17 in 1843 and quickly adopted that denomination’s stance on two controversial cultural issues of the day: slavery and Prohibition. Like many Northern-state Methodists of the time, Welch was actively involved in hiding and transporting slaves through the Underground Railroad prior to the Civil War. But, as fervent as he was about abolitionism, he was equally passionate in his opposition to alcohol.

The devout Methodist strongly opposed alcohol consumption and even refused to touch containers holding fermented wine used in communion. This put him in an awkward position since he was a communion steward at his Methodist Church in Vineland, New Jersey. Yet in the mid-1800s there were few alternatives for churches wanting to serve non-fermented wine during communion. Raw grape juice stored at room temperature would naturally ferment over time, and squeezing grapes the week of a communion service wasn’t convenient for many churches, especially when grapes were out of season.

Welch worked to find a solution. He spent 20 years—alongside his work as a minister, doctor, publisher, inventor, and dentist—attempting to create a non-fermenting wine.

Welch’s Grape Jelly advertisement from the February 1948 edition of Ladies Home Journal. Public Domain

Welch’s Non-Alcoholic Wine

In 1869, Welch experimented with Louis Pasteur’s inventive new technique of “pasteurization.” Boiling bottles of grape juice in his kitchen, Welch managed to preserve the juice and prevent the yeast in the bottles from fermenting. Jubilant, he served his new non-wine wine to his church congregation and offered it to surrounding churches. The response was underwhelming at best, enough so that after four years, Welch turned his attention back to running his dental supply company, marketing a cough syrup, and publishing Dental Items of Interest, a professional journal with the second-largest circulation of its kind in America.

Of Dr. Welch’s seven children, three sons and one daughter followed in their father’s footsteps in dentistry, including his second son, Charles. But Charles Welch had a flair for marketing that his father lacked. With Thomas’s blessing, Charles offered free samples of the sacramental wine substitute to area churches and began promoting his father’s juice in temperance magazines he published.

Timing Is Everything

Charles’s timing was impeccable as the temperance movement was spreading out across America. In 1876, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was encouraging its members to refuse sacramental communion wine that contained alcohol. In 1880, the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church strongly encouraged member churches to offer alcohol-free wine “whenever practicable,” and thanks to Thomas and Charles Welch, churches now had a practical alternative. Charles shrewdly made sure churches knew about that alternative by including ads for Welch’s grape juice in Methodist-published journals.

Early 20th-century postcard of the original Welch Factory in Westfield, N.Y. Public Domain

The juice became increasingly popular for its pleasing taste and non-alcoholic properties, and Charles further expanded the family beverage business outside of church circles in the 1890s. He changed the name from Dr. Welch’s Unfermented Wine to Dr. Welch’s Grape Juice and began promoting his father’s beverage for its health benefits.

Charles Welch’s marketing efforts triumphed in 1893 at the Chicago World’s Fair, where the company offered samples of the sweet concoction to thousands of attendees. Not long after that event, his father’s beverage quickly became known as the national drink, and Charles left his dentistry practice to focus on the beverage business full time. In 1897, he incorporated the family business, moving it from New Jersey to Westfield, New York, processing 300 tons of grapes the first year in their new facility.

Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, in 1913 proved that the federal government could enjoy wine on a beer budget when he served Welch’s Grape Juice instead of traditional wine for the visiting British ambassador at a State Department supper. Later that year, alcohol was banned on Navy ships in favor of Welch’s Grape Juice.

The Prohibition experiment may have been unsuccessful, but thanks to Thomas Welch’s persistence toward creating a non-fermenting drink made from grapes, millions today enjoy the fruits of his efforts.

This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.