4 minute read
The Spirit of Portland: Craft Distilling in the City of Roses
Above: Confiscated liquor bottles, Portland, 1927. Collections of Maine Historical Society.
There cannot be good living where there is not good drinking – Benjamin Franklin
Life's Good Here – Portland, Maine, city motto
by DR. ALISSA BUTLER, Study Center Manager
Portland, Maine, is home to seven craft distilleries producing an array of locally crafted spirits ranging from gin, rum, and vodka to whiskey, bourbon, and brandy. These distilleries—Batson River Brewing & Distilling, Hardshore Distilling, Liquid Riot Bottling Co., Maine Craft Distilling, Sweetgrass Winery and Distillery, New England Distilling Co., and Three of Strong Spirits—are part of the twenty-member Maine Distillers Guild. ey not only produce spirits in Maine; they do so using locally sourced ingredients, including malted barley, blueberries, apples, rye, buckwheat, potatoes, horseradish, pears, cranberries, herbs, botanicals, and maple syrup. Some even locally source Maine-made white oak barrels.
Historically, Maine primarily distilled rum, but the state’s residents enjoyed all kinds of alcohol, frequently. Between 1720 and 1820, the annual per capita consumption of alcohol rose from two gallons per person to five. A fear of contaminated water, along with the belief that alcoholic beverages were beneficial for health, contributed to their widespread consumption. Children were o en given rum to drink in the mornings “for their health,” and employers gave their laborers rum and beer to drink on the job and during their breaks. Even the Puritans drank in moderation.
Age, sex, class, and race may not have limited alcohol consumption in the home or workplace, but in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, local governments controlled who could own taverns and who could imbibe in them. Typically, taverns admitted White men to drink alcohol socially. Municipalities granted tavern operating licenses to applicants “of good repute,” and so it was most o en White male merchants, doctors, and lawyers who received them. Some taverns and inns were owned and operated by widows, as it was one of the few socially acceptable ways they could earn a living. Historic New England’s Gedney House in Salem, Massachusetts, operated by widow Mary Gedney, is one such example.
In the early nineteenth century, Maine became a nexus for prohibition due to the efforts of Neal Dow, the "Father of Prohibition." As Portland’s mayor, Dow championed the Maine Law of 1851, which prohibited the production and sale of alcohol more than sixty-five years before the Eighteenth Amendment. e law included a clause allowing alcohol for medical purposes, which led to the Portland Rum Riot of 1855 when Dow's oversight of medicinal alcohol storage incited public outrage. Furious at his perceived hypocrisy, a crowd of somewhere between 1,000 to 3,000 people gathered to demand Dow's arrest and a search of the storage site. When the crowd became violent, Dow ordered the militia to fire on his constituents, killing one man and wounding seven others.
After the national repeal of Prohibition in 1933, the gradual elimination of Maine’s pre-Prohibition restrictions enabled alcohol production to resume in the state. Brewing and winemaking outpaced distilling, though, and the state’s first distillery after Prohibition wasn’t opened until 2003.
While still a comparatively young industry, contemporary distilling has thrived in Portland and in Maine. Spirits and cocktails are viewed as a craft. Many members of Maine Distillers Guild have opened their own bars and restaurants to share the (liquid) fruits of their labor. They offer tastings, classes, and bespoke cocktails catering to the wide varieties of tastes and desired experiences of their customers. It seems that a er eighty years of prohibition and another seventy without a local distillery, Maine has enthusiastically embraced the craft. And Portland, once the heart of prohibition, has now become a hub for spirit enthusiasts.
