There’s a letter in the Metropolitan Diary column of today’s NYTimes from a North Carolina woman who recalls having her first mixed drink in a NYC bar when she was in her 20s while visiting here for a job interview. No exact date was given, but I got the sense that this took place quite a number of years ago, maybe in the 1960s or 1970s.
Anyway, the woman made a curious passing statement, namely that “North Carolina did not allow mixed drinks [at that time].”
This made me go, “Huh?!?” I know that states can be very protective of their local products and industries, and I presume that this ban had something to do with that sort of thinking, but did they really outlaw mixed drinks at bars? In homes? Could they do that?
Maybe it’s a license limitation on the strength of drinks they can serve. Mixed drinks being more alcoholic than a beer or wine. I’d like to see somebody post anything that says mix drinks are completely banned in that state.
In Oklahoma before 1984, it was illegal to purchase a mixed drink. You had to supply your own bottle of alcohol and the bartender would mix a drink for you and sell it back to you. You either left your bottle at the bar for your next visit or you drank it all that night.
Relevant article. I assure you that not all bars were as accommodating as the one mentioned at the beginning of the article.
Let me make more clear what I meant by completely banned in that state. I meant as in possessing a mixed drink will get you fined or arrested. Like I said I can see them limiting what a license allows them to sell. That Oklahoma ban is on how the alcohol is sold not what is sold if I read it correctly.
No, the woman means that she never could order a mixed drink in a bar until she went to New York. She could have bought hard liquor and made her own mixed drinks in her home in NC, if she were so inclined. Maybe her family didn’t have alcohol in their house, or she just wasn’t into drinking at home.
Restrictions against “liquor by the drink” were very common at one time, especially in the Southern and southwestern United States. Saloons were considered sinful places (think of the worst stereotypes in an old Western) and if you had to drink, better to do so at home and pass out on your own floor.
NC used to have “Brown Bag” laws which allowed a person to bring his own liquor into a restaurant, order a mixer and drink set-ups, and mix a drink at the table. Private clubs were allowed to maintain personal liquor inventories for members and mix from that stock at a bar.
Liquor by the drink was not legal in Texas until ~1972. Before that one had to bring their own bottle with them, the bar/nightclub/restaurant would sell “set-ups”, and you mixed your own. The term “brown-bagging” comes from bringing your own bottle in a brown bag. You were allowed to leave with your opened bottle. Their were private clubs where members could leave their own bottles for later use.
Liquor laws are vastly different thru-out the country. I was in S. Carolina ~15 years ago and the airport bars all used one-drink bottles, like on airlines.
Remember, as of now, we still are the United STATES of America. Cities, counties, and states can still determine their own laws.
I would guess that there are dry precincts, cities, and counties in all 50 states. Not positive.
On edit: Sorry, Contrapuntal, I did not see your post.
I swear this is true: I was at a bar in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1961, when I happened to notice taped to the mirror behind the barman a “Black Market Liquor License” issued by the state of Mississippi.
Is was in Charleston, SC in mid-'98, and all hard liquor was served like this. Also, you could not have more than one drink at a time per person per table. Want a shot and a beer? They’ll bring you the shot, and once you’ve shot it, they’ll take away the empty and bring you your beer.
I went out for a nice Italian meal one night. When it came to dessert, I ordered a cappucino and a double Amaretto. I had about one solid gulp of wine left in my glass, and they wouldn’t serve the Amaretto until I either drank it or let them take the glass away.
I’m not as familiar with SC liquor laws as here at home, but in Tennessee, there is usually a measure up for vote in some county or municipality every election to serve liquor by the drink. In many areas, the measure is for the purpose of being in the running to get a hotel or chain restaurant.
In NC, only beer and wine can be sold in retail stores. Liquor is only sold at expensive state-run Alcoholic Beverage Control stores (their site says there’s an 80% markup on every case of liquor). From what I gather from the NC ABC website FAQ, a town or county has to vote on whether to allow alcohol. If they vote yes, the state opens an ABC store in that area. The county also votes on whether to allow mixed drinks, but I assume you still have to buy your liquor from the state to sell mixed drinks.
I knew someone who ran a restaurant in NC and they said selling mixed drinks was pretty difficult. IIRC, they had to have the bar separated from the restaurant with no door or anything in between. It had to be completely separate. I’m sure that was probably a local law, not statewide, but they had nothing but complaints about NC’s awkward liquor laws.
It sounds believable that the person in the OP couldn’t get a mixed drink in her area, either because the nearby counties didn’t allow it or no one bothered to sell it in the ones that did. And it’s possible she’s right and the state didn’t allow mixed drinks at all, I couldn’t find anything about that.
Probably some of these laws have to do with the repeal of prohibition. Mixed drinks were not as common before prohibition as during it. In speakeasies the bartenders would put juices, etc., in hard liquor to mask the taste of poor quality moonshine. Hard liquor was bootlegged because it took up less space in transportation. So mixed drinks became associated with “dens of iniquity.”
I’ve been to a few countries where people rarely mix drinks. In Colombia, for example–with the exception of rum and Coca Cola–and tourist places, few people have mixed drinks, especially at home. They just drink it straight up. They’re seen as fancy-pants drinks–a kind of affectation of the well-to-do, associated with the U.S. In Cuba and Mexico the influence of tourism from the U.S. caused the modern popularity of things like margaritas, pina colada, and mojitos. The average Joe usually drinks tequila, rum or aguardiente straight up.
Keep in mind the laws address “liquor by the drink”–that is, liquor sold for on-premises consumption–as opposed to mixed drinks per se. If we describe these loosely as bans on serving “mixed drinks”, it’s only because that’s the most common manner in which modern Americans consume hard liquor.
Another term for the states like SC was “package states”, referring to the fact that you had to buy booze by the entire sealed bottle. And, yeah, I remember visiting SC many years ago. If you ordered a mixed drink in a bar, you got the setup in a glass, and an airline bottle of booze. At least you knew they weren’t skimping on the expected amount of liquor in your drink, I guess.
Yes, obviously it would be near impossible to police how someone takes their poison at home. These laws are much more likely to be enforced regarding businesses in public places. For blue laws that say you can’t sell liquor on Sundays, what’s to keep someone from buying it Saturday night and then drinking it the next day?
My point is that it wouldn’t surprise me if it was the image mixed drinks got during prohibition that motivated such local laws. Many of the the law makers in North Carolina probably kept hard liquor at home. After prohibition, they didn’t have to worry about what the neighbors said. But the community at large in some places like to think of themselves as God-fearing, moral people, and I imagine that a larger percentage of those who would otherwise order a mixed drink than a shot straight up were probably women–it might have been an attempt to make bars places where only men go. It doesn’t make sense, but then much of political posturing doesn’t.