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Grape High Ball
Place a small piece of ice in a glass, fill half full with grape juice, and add cold water or Seltzer. Stir well and serve.
A two-ingredient temperance drink that depends entirely on the quality of the juice and the coldness of the glass. A few notes on what the 1919 pantry meant by its terms.
- The glassA high ball glass of the period held roughly 8 to 10 ounces, straight-sided. Half full of juice means about 4 ounces, topped with the same again of water or seltzer.
- Grape juiceIn 1919 America this would almost certainly have been unfermented bottled Concord: sweet, dark purple and considerably more assertive than most modern white or blended grape juices. Look for 100 percent Concord if you want the drink the book most likely intended.
- SeltzerThen as now, plain carbonated water. It is not club soda or tonic; both add salts or quinine that fight the grape. Chill the bottle rather than relying on the ice.
- The iceA small piece most likely meant one lump chipped from a block rather than a full glass of cubes. Small modern cubes present more surface area and in quantity will thin the drink well past the intended strength, so use one or two large cubes.
- Order of operationsAdd the seltzer last and stir once, gently. Vigorous stirring drives off the carbonation quickly.
- SweetnessIf the juice cloys, shift the ratio toward the seltzer or add a squeeze of lemon.
- YieldOne glass. Scaled for a pitcher, mix the juice and water in advance and add the seltzer at the table.
This comes from an American drink book published as national prohibition approached, offering the bar's forms and glassware without its contents. A "high ball" was simply a spirit lengthened with soda in a tall glass, and the temperance version kept the name, the glass and the ritual while substituting grape juice for whiskey. Unfermented grape juice had a particular symbolic weight in that argument: pasteurized bottled juice had been commercialized in the late nineteenth century largely for church communion use by Methodist temperance advocates. William Jennings Bryan, as Secretary of State, was widely mocked for serving grape juice at official dinners, and the phrase "grape juice diplomacy" stuck. A recipe this slight is less about technique than about demonstrating that the social gesture of a drink could survive the dry years intact.