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IN THIS NEWSLETTER:
- What's Coming Up At Pairings?
- Prohibition Remembrance Day
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Our tenth anniversary is coming up in March, and while we've been absolutely planning out a big old party for that whole month, we've got just scads and scads of time leading up to then. So, we've also been planning and conversing and yelling and drinking and hugging it out and planning some more, and we have a calendar of upcoming events leading up to the big month!
Want a look ahead at what's coming to your favorite, weird wine shop? Here's what the gang at Pairings has planned for the coming weeks:
*Subject to change if we think of something cooler.
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Our His Dark Materials flight continues through Sunday, January 22nd. Six wines paired to three main characters and their daemons, served in three rounds. Jeffrey has done a great job not only pairing the wines to their respective characters, but also having the pairs of wines play against each other. It's a really special flight, one that our customers have taken to - and there's still a week to experience it!
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The sun is in the sign of Aquarius from January 20th to February 18th, and we'll be commemorating it with the return of our Astrological flights! We'll be featuring five wines paired to the qualities of Aquarians from Wednesday, January 25th, through Sunday the 29th.
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January 31st through February 5th is Wine Club week! As always, we'll be serving five wines that we are bonkers excited about, and our Jeff's Pick Wine Club members get to take home three of them - PLUS, this flight is only $10 for members, and they get 20% off retail wines to go, $5 off flights all month long, and $2 off glasses. Sound like something you want to get in on? Sign up here, or come visit us this week and taste what the big deal is about!
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From February 7th through the 12th, we'll be leading up to Valentine's Day with a flight celebrating five incredible actresses portraying five powerful characters. Helen Mirren, Gal Gadot, Viola Davis, Michelle Yeoh, and Jenna Ortega (or at least their wine counterparts) will all be tearing up the bar with their sheer awesomeness! And they'll be the guests of honor at...
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On Valentine's Day, we'll be having an event built especially for our women-identifying friends - but certainly not exclusive only to them. We'll be pouring our Badass Women of TV and Film flight and serving three special food bites including caviar, a triple creme, and chocolate-covered strawberries. There'l also be mini-tarot readings with friend of the shop Reverend Erik Arneson, and one lucky person in attendance will win a drawing for a free one hour massage! Details to come.
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We are still hashing out what we're going to do from February 15th through the 23rd. Will we do a Fringe flight? What about The Last of Us? Or something EVEN BETTER? Stay tuned!
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And finally, for the last part of February, we're having another weekend-long Blue Collar Wines event. We'll be serving up twelve tasty, quality wines, all priced for affordability. These weekends are a mega-fantastic good time, so get these dates into your calendar right now!
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Women, Equal Rights, and Prohibition
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New York City Deputy Police Commissioner John A. Leach, right, watching agents pour liquor into sewer following a raid during the height of prohibition | Library of Congress
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Martin Luther King Jr. Day is celebrated on the third Monday of January every year. A day of remembrance dedicated to a seminal figure in US civil rights and non-violent activism, this year it fell on January 16th. And while MLK Day deserves the majority of our attention, the wine and alcohol world also knows the 16th as the commemoration of a more cautionary time in our history.
The National Prohibition Act, also known as the Volstead Act, was ratified by the US Congress on January 16th, 1920. It is a mark of how important a moment this was in our country's history that we have the option to celebrate two holidays related to it: Prohibition Remembrance Day on the 16th, and National Repeal Day on December 5th - the day when the 21st Amendment ended the Prohibition Act. This week is the 103rd anniversary of Prohibition, and with our Galentine's celebration coming up, it's a good time to reflect on one group that was instrumental in getting the Volstead Act passed.
According to the book Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, by Daniel Okrent, women like Susan B. Anthony, as well as women's political groups like the Women's Christian Temperance Union were early supporters of not just reducing the use of alcohol, but eliminating it altogether. According to the National Archives, "Women were strongly behind the temperance movement, for alcohol was seen as the destroyer of families and marriages. Men would often spend their money on alcohol, leaving women with no money to provide for their children." Many women also believed that outlawing alcohol would reduce instances of physical violence in the home and other social ills like crime and mental illness. They also hoped that allying themselves with a cause that was picking up political steam would gain them political allies and clout that would help them get other legislation passed, like the right to vote.
Today, things seem to have changed a bit. Forbes Magazine reports that in 2021, women accounted for 59% of all wine drinkers. Women are also often associated with wine in the media - drinking with girlfriends, having a glass after work, and so on. But this week, it's worth remembering that womens' relationship with alcohol and wine in the US has a long and complex history, one that has been threaded together with their history of fighting for equal rights - to say nothing of their critical involvement in the Civil Rights Movement itself.
Check out this Politico article for a rare viewpoint on Prohibition's policy successes. Or, read this article on Uncorked: the blog of the California Wine Club, on how California wineries were specifically affected by the Volstead Act. |
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As always, we're so grateful to you, our community! Thank you for being our friends, virtually and otherwise.
- Jeff & the Pairings Portland crew
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