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It sometimes seems that pretty much every block in every neighborhood in St. Louis is punctuated by a trio of taverns and anchored by a church. We have always been a city of pious drinkers.
Waves of French, German, and Italian immigrants brought their thirsts to St. Louis - and constructed the means to slake them. When the U.S. Brewers Association met in St. Louis in the summer of 1879, more than 25 local breweries served as the hometown hosts. The national temperance movement and Prohibition barely dented our enthusiasm. Anheuser-Busch, once the world's largest brewery, came to cover 50 or so blocks in the City, employ thousands of us, and use our name to market the best-known beer brand in the universe.
And it isn't just beer.
In 1873, German immigrant John H Bardenheier founded the John Bardenheier Wine and Liquor Company, later known as Bardenheier Wine Cellars, on Market Street behind the Old Cathedral. At its peak, Bardenheier's was one of the oldest and largest family owned and operated wineries in the United States. The organizers of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair gave Tennessean Jack Daniel's whiskey a gold medal - and Daniel's grateful family moved his distillery to St. Louis, where it made Old No. 7 on Duncan Avenue until 1938. In 1917, an elegant West Ender, Mrs. Julius S. Walsh Jr., invited 50 guests to her Lindell Boulevard town house on a Sunday at high noon for an hour of mixed drinks and chat, launching an international phenomenon that came to be called a "cocktail party."
This week's Mini Poll seeks to measure your feelings about alcohol - and to gauge your opinion on some public policy questions that are currently swirling in the news.
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