Forbidden Fruit - 1000 years of Prohibition (Online)
Taught by David McNicoll
Although I now live in New York I come from the heart of the Scottish Highlands, a land steeped in
whisky in both story and song, and where I honed my knowledge and enjoyment of our national drink. Over the last decade I have taken that experience and built upon it, representing as ambassador several Scotch brands in the city. I am about to launch a new book exploring the ‘language of whisky’, and the origins of the names of those familiar bottles on the back-bar.
Location: Online Class
From the apple in the Garden of Eden to Scotland’s minimum alcohol pricing measures introduced in 2018, forbidden fruit has always been with us. And where there’s ‘vice’, hypocritical morality, is usually lurking in the background; and since time immemorial, laws have been passed by those in power to ‘benefit’ a misguided population that otherwise would be led astray. Known as sumptuary laws, they also have the dual purpose of controlling a people: what they can do, how they should live and how they should enjoy themselves (or preferably not enjoy themselves).
When the 18th Amendment in America was ratified in 1920, I doubt Congress had Jefferson’s ‘pursuit of happiness’ in mind. US Prohibition, the so-called ‘Noble Experiment, is perhaps the most famous sumptuary measure of all, but it is by no means a unique example, or a stand-alone case. This class will take us down the rabbit hole of multiple prohibitions, why they arose and ultimately, why they failed. Be it gin in seventeenth century London, or cannabis in our own time, those walking the corridors of power always seem to think they know best; they rarely do."
