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Prohibition minis

I was recently in Las Vegas with my wife, Rosie, and club president, Colin Ryder and his wife
th
Dianne. We were there for the 40 birthday party of Colin & Di’s daughter, Angela. It was
HOT, damned HOT! To escape the heat the four of us decided to go to the Mob Museum.
This is well worth a visit (especially during the heat of the day) and a bonus was that we
found some genuine bootleg minis from the US Prohibition era, 1920-1933. An added bonus
was that photography was allowed (not that that would normally stop me).

As an aside, did you know that New Zealand narrowly voted for prohibition in 1919? There
were (sober) celebrations until the votes of the troops still in Europe following WW1 were
counted. These votes were very heavily against Prohibition (no surprise there) and tipped the
balance to a no vote. Phew!

There are 10 minis in the museum, although 3 are duplicates. These are about 75ml and
bear the name Horting’s. Horting’s was a whiskey distiller and seems to have officially only
been in existence until 1909. But it appears The Mob used the name on some of the booze it
supplied to speakeasy’s and other illegal outlets and, as you can see, not only whiskey.

In fact, not even whiskey. The labels are hard to read,
as far as I can make out they are:

???? Blackberry Brandy,
Fine Berlin Kummel, Fine
Malt Gin, Newton Grape
Wine, Pure Jamaica Rum,
Pure Old Port Wine & Fine
Ginger Brandy. I’m sure
there were more and
wonder whether any are still
in existence anywhere.

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