By Rachael O’Hara
October 2, 2025
Rachael is a current anthropology Master’s student at NAU, and graduated with her Bachelor’s in anthropology from the university in 2020. She is a historical archaeologist specializing in consumption, capitalism, and their interactions with identity throughout the 20th century. She was the Graduate Assistant for the Apex Field School through the 2024 and 2025 field seasons. Rachael previously wrote a blog on artifacts associated with beer brewing during Prohibition!
For more about Apex or the Apex, Arizona Archaeology Project, visit our website or email Dr. Emily Dale at emily.dale@nau.edu.
Medicinal alcohol may seem like a foreign concept today, but it was already old news in the 1920s. While the patent medicine era of the Victorian age had just reached its end due to increased drug regulations (no more cocaine in the cough syrup!), many existing medicines continued to have large quantities of alcohol in them and were sometimes used as beverages when access to alcohol was restricted or socially untoward. When the Volstead Act was passed in 1920 and ushered in the start of Prohibition, two loopholes for legal alcohol were still present: sacramental alcohol was allowed for religious purposes, and alcohol could be prescribed by doctors for medicinal usage. Many distillers and vineyards began clamoring for medicinal licenses from the U.S. government to keep their doors open.
Wine Tonics & Elixirs
Because of the loophole in the Volstead Act for sacramental alcohol, the wine industry was not hit as hard by Prohibition as distilleries and breweries. Many vineyards simply switched to producing sacramental wine and medicinal wine tonics and elixirs. The Vai Brothers Wine Company chose the latter.
The Padre Vineyard Company was founded in the Cucamonga Valley of California in 1870 by brothers Giovanni and James Vai. According to Giovanni’s naturalization records, the Vai brothers were Italian immigrants who came to the United States sometime around 1912.
Advertisements for Vai’s Prohibition-Era “Padres Elixir” recommended a dosage of “one or two measure glassfuls before or after meals,” touted supposed health properties, advised that it was definitely not to be used as a recreational beverage, and even included occasional testimonials from registered nurses. Wine tonics were said to aid in blood flow, help with exhaustion and headaches, and to aid with various “women’s troubles.”
Three amber “Vai Bros. Wines” bottle bases, all manufactured in Los Angeles, have been found at Apex. Wine, clearly, was not nearly as popular among the workers as whiskey and beer, for which we have far more evidence. The Vai Bros. name on the bottles also indicates that these wines were consumed after Prohibition, when the Vais went back to their original company name. Their presence at the site reveals that the company’s strategic transition to medicinal alcohol allowed them to survive.
Medicinal Whiskey
Medicinal whiskey was wildly popular during Prohibition. A 1931 Houston Chronicle news article announced the distillation of approximately 2,435,631 gallons of government-sanctioned medicinal whiskey that year alone. Whiskey was mostly prescribed as a headache remedy but was also advertised to help with stomach and muscle problems.
Three bottle fragments found at Apex bear the logo of the American Medicinal Spirits Company. Founded by Kentucky distillers around the beginning of Prohibition, the AMS Co. was the largest producers of medicinal whiskey in the country. These bottles found near management housing, indicating that employees like the camp superindentent might have had more access to things like medicinal whiskey thanks to their higher incomes. Getting a prescription for medicinal whiskey often cost around $3 with another $3 or so to get the prescription filled. That would be over $100 today!
One advantage for vineyards and distilleries that transitioned to the medicinal alcohol industry, was that once Prohibition was repealed in 1933, they could immediately go back to business as usual because alcohol production had never really stopped in the first place. Some of the whiskey brands found at Apex, such as Frankfort Distillery’s Four Roses and a bottle lid that doubled as a shot glass, had once been made as medicine but switched back to a “regular” beverage after Prohibition.
Either way, Prohibition did not stop the residents at Apex from having whiskey and wine.
Mystery Alcohol!
Several bottles were found with a shield logo on the bottom of the front and back surrounded by diagonal, horizontal, and vertical lines. The sides similarly have radiating lines. Beyond one with the Latchford Glass Company logo on the base and one with the “Federal Law Forbids” warning, no other identifying information was found. Do you recognize it?
Secondly, we still need help finding the elusive whiskey Rectifier-19! The “R-19” code, used to register whiskey makers after Prohibition, has been found on the base of at least 10 of our bottles, mostly manufactured by the Latchford Glass Company of Los Angeles. We’ve even found several more examples since we first asked about this whiskey manufacture in January 2025! Do you know who this number belonged to?
Let us know if you recognize either of these mystery bottles!
Sources
Associated Press. 1931. “Government Makes 2,435,631 Gallons of Medicinal Whiskey.” The Houston Chronicle, p. 24.
Daily News. 2010. “Gino L. Filippi: Memories of Pafre Winery in Rancho Cucamonga.” Los Angeles Daily News. https://www.dailynews.com/2010/02/12/gino-l-filippi-memories-of-padre-winery-in-rancho-cucamonga/
Ettinger, Dylan. 2023. “The Strange History of Medicinal Whiskey and Its Modern Revival.” VinePair. https://vinepair.com/articles/medicinal-whiskey-history-and-revival/
The Mob Museum. n.d. “Alcohol as Medicine and Poison.” Prohibition: An Interactive History. https://prohibition.themobmuseum.org/the-history/the-prohibition-underworld/alcohol-as-medicine-and-poison/
National Museum of American History. N.d. “National Prohibition Act Prescription Form for Medicinal Liquor.” Smithsonian. https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_1441835
O’Hara, Rachael. 2025. “‘We weren’t dry, I’ll tell you that’: Prohibition-Era Alcohol Consumption at Northern Arizona’s Apex Logging Camp,” From Opium to Moonshine: Unveiling Historical Substance Use, Prohibition, and Queer Histories in Archaeological Contexts symposium, Society for Historical Archaeology, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Spitzzeri, Paul R. 2019. “Ticket to the Twenties Themes & Tangents: Wine Tonics, Elixirs and Bitters in the Prohibition Era.” The Homestead Museum Blog. https://homesteadmuseum.blog/2019/10/02/ticket-to-the-twenties-themes-tangents-wine-tonics-elixirs-and-bitters-in-the-prohibition-era/