Prohibition shuttered most wineries between 1920 and 1933. Some survived by producing sacramental wine or shipping grapes east, but the industry that had defined St. Helena for half a century was effectively destroyed overnight.

The town’s economy shifted to prunes, walnuts, and cattle. Main Street businesses adapted or closed. It would take decades — and the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment — before wine would return as the valley’s defining industry.

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