WINE - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

WINEAuthored

The Law Mind • 945 words

Definition

In legal contexts, wine refers to the juice of grapes, with its precise definition varying by regulatory purpose and jurisdiction. Three distinct legal meanings have been applied:

1. Unfermented grape juice. The narrowest definition, used in some temperance-era statutes and judicial opinions to restrict regulation to fermented products only, thereby excluding fresh or unprocessed juice from liquor laws.

2. Fermented grape juice. The most common legal meaning and the baseline definition in modern alcohol regulation. Wine in this sense is a vinous liquor produced by the fermentation of grape juice, distinguished from malt liquors (beer, ale) and distilled spirits.

3. All vinous or fruit-based fermented beverages. A broader regulatory definition adopted in some statutes and licensing schemes to include wines made from fruits other than grapes, as well as blended or flavored products. Some jurisdictions extend the term to cover any commercial product sold or labeled as wine.

Specialized preparations — such as medicated wines or wine-based tonics (e.g., wine of pepsin) — have generated litigation over whether they fall within liquor licensing requirements or qualify as pharmaceutical products exempt from such regulation.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The Wiktionary entry for "wine" in this context reflects non-legal uses, including a software compatibility layer for running Windows programs on Unix systems. The beverage meaning, standard in ordinary speech, is not captured in the source provided.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The expressed juice of grapes, esp. when fermented; a beverage or liquor prepared from grapes by squeezing out their juice, and (usually) allowing it to ferment."

The gap between common and legal meaning is definitional precision rather than substantive difference. Ordinary usage assumes fermentation; legal usage does not. Courts and legislatures have had to specify whether a given statute's use of "wine" captures unfermented juice, fermented grape products only, or the full range of fruit-based vinous beverages. A researcher reading a statutory definition that says simply "wine" cannot assume the ordinary meaning controls.

Common Confusion

Wine vs. Liquor vs. Vinous Liquor: Regulatory schemes frequently use these terms in overlapping or inconsistent ways. "Wine" may be treated as a subcategory of "liquor" in one statute and excluded from "liquor" (defined as distilled spirits only) in another. "Vinous liquor" is an older term that sometimes encompasses wine and sometimes distinguishes it from malt and spirituous liquors. Both Anderson's and Bouvier's route researchers from "wine" to the broader heading LIQUOR, reflecting that wine's legal significance lies almost entirely in its relationship to the liquor regulatory framework rather than as a standalone legal category.

Why It Matters in Research

Wine is not a term with a stable, jurisdiction-neutral legal definition. Its meaning in any given source depends entirely on the regulatory scheme at issue, and the definition has shifted sharply across the Prohibition era boundary.

Pre-Prohibition sources: Wine appears in licensing, excise, and nuisance law. Definition disputes centered on fermentation — whether unfermented grape juice triggered liquor restrictions — and on medicinal exemptions. Bouvier's entry reflects this instability directly, citing cases that reach different definitional conclusions.

Prohibition era: The definition of wine became a front-line legal question. Federal and state prohibition statutes required courts to determine whether sacramental wine, medicinal wine preparations, and grape juice products fell within the prohibition. The span of definitions in Bouvier's — unfermented juice, fermented juice, all commercial brands — maps directly onto this litigation landscape.

Post-Prohibition and modern: The federal regulatory framework (administered by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau under the Federal Alcohol Administration Act) defines wine with specificity by type, alcoholic content, and production method. State alcohol beverage control statutes adopt their own definitions, which may or may not track federal usage.

Researchers using historical sources should be alert to three traps: (1) a statute that says "wine" may mean something narrower or broader than the modern default; (2) medicinal or sacramental wine carve-outs were litigated intensely and the outcomes were jurisdiction-specific; and (3) Anderson's entry is a bare cross-reference to LIQUOR, meaning researchers who stop at "wine" in that source will miss all substantive content.

Historical Dictionary Support

Bouvier's Law Dictionary provides the most useful historical treatment. The entry synthesizes competing judicial definitions without resolving them, which is itself informative: as of Bouvier's compilation, there was no settled legal consensus on whether wine required fermentation. The citation to 5 Blackf. 118 supports the unfermented-juice definition; citations to Indiana and West Virginia reporters support the fermented-juice definition; the Minnesota citation addresses the medicinal wine problem. The note that wine "includes all commercial brands of wine" reflects the broadest regulatory reading.

Anderson's Dictionary of Law offers no independent definition, routing entirely to LIQUOR. This is consistent with Anderson's general approach to alcohol-related terms but leaves the wine-specific definitional disputes invisible to a researcher who does not follow the cross-reference.

Neither dictionary addresses what became the central post-Prohibition question: the federal classification system for wine types. Both sources predate or straddle the regulatory architecture that now governs the term.

Jurisdictional Note

Federal law defines wine by category (table wine, dessert wine, fruit wine, etc.) with specific standards of identity and alcoholic content thresholds. State alcohol beverage control statutes vary in whether they track federal definitions, use their own broader or narrower definitions, or incorporate wine into a general "alcoholic beverages" or "liquor" category. Researchers working on licensing, taxation, or distribution questions must identify the controlling statutory definition in the specific jurisdiction and period at issue.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

See LIQUOR LAWS

WINEcrossref

Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

See LIQUOR.

WINEmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

the internal police of the kingdom. It re- quired every man to provide himself with armor to aid in keeping the peace; and if it did not create the offices of high and petty constables, it recognized and regu- lated them, and charged them with duties answering somewhat to those of our mili- tia officers. The statute took its name from the ancient capital of the kingdom. It was repealed by the statute of 7 & 8 Geo. IV. c. 27.

WINEmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

The unfermented juice of the grape. 5 Blackf. 118. See LIQUOR LAWS. A fruit juice. Thorpe, National and State Prohibition, 158; 58 Cong. Rec. 4848. A fermented grape juice. Id.; 191 Ind. 319. It includes all commercial brands of wine. Id.; 85 W. Va. 261. Wine of pepsin may be a beverage, as well as a medicine. Id.; 151 Minn. 340. Wine is a well-known form of vinous liquor, and it is common knowledge that it contains alcohol.***** Its character is so well known that the court takes judicial notice of these qualities, and also that it contains considerably more than 1 per cent. of alcohol by volume, that it is intoxicating when taken into the stomach, and that it

WINEn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

The expressed juice of grapes, esp. when fermented; a beverage or liquor prepared from grapes by squeezing out their juice, and (usually) allowing it to ferment. "Red wine of Gascoigne." Piers Plowman. Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. Prov. xx. 1. Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine. Milton. A liquor or beverage prepared from the juice of any fruit or plant by a process similar to that for grape wine; as, currant wine; gooseberry wine; palm wine. The effect of drinking wine in excess; intoxication. Noah awoke from his wine. Gen. ix. 24. Birch wine, Cape wine, etc. See under Birch, Cape, etc.  -- Spirit of wine. See under Spirit.  -- To have drunk wine of ape or wine ape, to be so drunk as to be foolish. [Obs.] Chaucer.  -- Wine acid. (Chem.) See Tartaric acid, under Tartaric. [Colloq.] - - Wine apple (Bot.), a large red apple, with firm flesh and a rich, vinous flavor.  -- Wine bag, a wine skin.  -- Wine biscuit, a kind of sweet biscuit served with wine.  -- Wine cask, a cask for holding wine, or which holds, or has held, wine.  -- Wine cellar, a cellar adapted or used for storing wine.  -- Wine cooler, a vessel of porous earthenware used to cool wine by the evaporation of water; also, a stand for wine bottles, containing ice.a drink composed of approximately equal parts of wine and some carbonated beverage (soda). Also called California cooler.  -- Wine fly (Zoöl.), small two-winged fly of the genus Piophila, whose larva lives in wine, cider, and other fermented liquors.  -- Wine grower, one who cultivates a vineyard and makes wine.  -- Wine measure, the measure by which wines and other spirits are sold, smaller than beer measure.  -- Wine merchant, a merchant who deals in wines.  -- Wine of opium (Pharm.), a solution of opium in aromatized sherry wine, having the same strength as ordinary laudanum; -- also Sydenham's laudanum.  -- Wine press, a machine or apparatus in which grapes are pressed to extract their juice.  -- Wine skin, a bottle or bag of skin, used, in various countries, for carrying wine.  -- Wine stone, a kind of crust deposited in wine casks. See 1st Tartar, 1.  -- Wine vault. (a) A vault where wine is stored. (b) A place where wine is served at the bar, or at tables; a dramshop. Dickens.  -- Wine vinegar, vinegar made from wine.  -- Wine whey, whey made from milk coagulated by the use of wine.

Winename

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

A surname. | A free and open-source compatibility layer that aims to allow computer programs developed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. | Acronym of Windows Emulator. | A free and open-source compatibility layer that aims to allow computer programs developed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. | Acronym of Wine is not an emulator.

winenoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

An alcoholic beverage made by fermenting grape juice, with an ABV ranging from 5.5–16%. | An alcoholic beverage made by fermenting other substances, producing a similar ABV. | A serving of wine. | The color of red wine, a deep reddish purple.

wineverb

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

To entertain (someone) with wine. | To drink wine.

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