With bars paying homage to the ritual and tradition of yesterday’s speakeasies slowly popping up in cities like New York, San Francisco, and Seattle, I thought it was time I did my research on the well-intentioned but ill-conceived experiment of Prohibition. It wasn’t long after the Volstead Act of 1919 that speakeasies, a collection of underground bars and hidden rooms, began filling with patrons raising their glasses in defiance of the ban on alcohol.
How were these people getting their illegal drinks? Thanks in large part to bootleggers like William McCoy. Sailor McCoy turned his affection for boats into one of the most famous bootlegging businesses of all time. Transporting $8 cases of liquor from the Bahamas to Florida and up the east coast, McCoy would make $300,000 on each of his business trips. The key was that McCoy’s liquor was genuine imported spirits, not bathtub gin or moonshine. He was known for never watering down his liquor or changing labels on bottles to increase profits. This forced his competition to try and seize his legacy by claiming their own illicit drinks as the ‘The Real McCoy’. Despite the desperate efforts of his competitors, the genuine quality of William McCoy’s imported spirits stood on its own, and the story remains as true now as it did then; everyone still seeks…The Real McCoy.
