8 Bars and Beverages That Outlasted the 18th Amendment

Any time you walk into an American bar that’s more than a century old, you’re inside a haunt that somehow managed to survive Prohibition. Ratified on January 16, 1919, the 18th Amendment banned the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, into, and out of the United States and all its territories. 

Bartenders hung up their strainers, secret stashes evaporated, manufacturers switched from beer to ice cream production, and recipes fell out of fashion or were lost to time. By the time Prohibition ended (with the ratification of the 21st Amendment) on December 5, 1933, drinking culture had changed. Countless taprooms, taverns, inns, pubs, parlors, and cantinas were gone. But not all of them. 

Each of the establishments and drinks on this list found a clever, clandestine, and undoubtedly sketchy way to survive that infamous 14-year stretch. You can cheers to them, with them, or in them in 2020.