Eat the City(99)

18 “sacramental wine business among the Gentiles”: “Dry Agents Seize $500,000 in Wine,” New York Times, November 12, 1921.

19 hundreds of shady wineries: “Dry Raiders Seize Sacramental Wine,” New York Times, September 13, 1922.

20 “Dry Agents Plan War upon Illicit Rabbis”: Michael Lerner, Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 121.

21 “He was a bootlegger”: Michael Cooper, “Charming Wine You Can Cut,” New York Times, March 31, 1996.

22 the kosher wine industry was born: Leon D. Adams, The Wines of America, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1973), 489.

23 “as they would make bread”: Michael Lerner, Dry Manhattan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 106.

24 Italian households spent: Ibid.

25 the gutters in front of tenements: Ibid.

26 shipments of California wine grapes: “Wine Grapes Must Debark in New Jersey This Fall,” New York Times, October 19, 1924.

27 “a reluctant squidginess”: Ibid.

28 recipes and ingredients for wine making: Ibid.

29 “Succulent grape, signor”: Michael di Liberto, “Wine Time in East Harlem,” New York Times, November 8, 1931.

30 “They would get deliveries”: Jeff Kisseloff, You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1989), 411.

31 “A gallon would go phtttt!”: Jerry Della Femina, An Italian Grows in Brooklyn (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1978), 20.

32 Italian American manhood: Laura Schenone, A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told Through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003), 218.

33 “You and your group”: Steven Flax, “Let Them Keep Laughing,” Forbes, September 28, 1981.

34 Meyer Robinson filed a certificate: Certificate of Incorporation, Monarch Wine Company, State of New York, January 12, 1934. Courtesy of Gale Robinson.

35 purchased equipment at bankruptcy sales: January 7, 1942, Monarch Wine meeting minutes, early Monarch Wine documents. Courtesy of Gale Robinson.

36 Meyer and Leo cut a deal: Minutes of a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Monarch Wine Company, Inc., June 15, 1944. Courtesy of Gale Robinson.

37 use the Manischewitz name on its labels: Laura Manischewitz Alpern, Manischewitz: The Matzo Family: The Making of an American Jewish Icon (Jersey City, N.J.: KTAV Publishing House, in association with the American Jewish Historical Society, 2008), 186.

38 the office towers of mid-Manhattan: Jan Morris, Manhattan ’45 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 52.

39 “We have been fortunate”: Ibid., 212.

40 “It’s a na?ve domestic Burgundy”: Ibid., 213.

41 “An engine, its insides of gears and belts”: Morris Freedman, “Wine Like Mother Used to Make,” Commentary, May 1954.

42 “like Mother used to make”: Ibid.

43 people were drinking more of it: Harold D. Watkins, “Californians Reassess American Tastes, Pour Out Many New Flavors,” New York Times, September 17, 1958.

44 “We dropped almost all the visual advertising”: Freedman, “Wine Like Mother Used to Make,” Commentary, May 1954.

45 “We want to bring drinking wine”: Ibid.

46 Manischewitz was competing: Ibid.

47 “Man, oh Manischewitz”: NASA video of the Apollo 17 mission at http://?next.?nasa.?gov/?alsj/?a17/?a17v.?1424550.?mpg.

48 Sammy Davis Jr. had been contracted: David Usborne, “The After-life of Sammy Davis Jr.,” The Independent, June 23, 2007.

50 More than 85 percent of Manischewitz: Ibid.





EPILOGUE


1 you’d have 3,079 acres: “The Potential for Urban Agriculture in New York City,” Urban Design Lab at the Earth Institute, Columbia University, 2011.

2 10 percent of the city’s backyards: Interview with Nevin Cohen, assistant professor, environmental studies, The New School.

3 “A big, giant parasite: “The Sustainable City: Farming Upwards,” pod-cast of the New York Academy of Sciences, http://?www.?nyas.?org/?Publications/?Media/?PodcastDetail.?aspx??cid=?9abc4f6d-?2489-?48ea-?b088-?bf5c5?ef69c27.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Robin Shulman grew up in a farming town in tobacco country in Ontario, Canada, and several moves later, arrived in New York City at age sixteen. She has a bit of rural and a lot of urban in her.

As a journalist, Shulman has reported for news outlets including the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, and the Guardian. She has worked in rural, suburban, and urban America and in the Middle East. She lives in New York City.