©2001 The Ohio SBDC at Youngstown State University
The Ohio SBDC at Youngstown State University
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LEGENDS

William Wrigley, Jr.

Oscar Mayer

Thomas B. Welch, M.D., the founder of Welch Grape Juice Company, was born in England in 1825.  A devout Christian and staunch prohibitionist, Dr. Thomas B. Welch did not like wine being used in his church's communion service.  In 1869 he decided to try developing a non-alcoholic substitution.   Dr. Welch had an ample supply of grapes on hand, because he lived in the town of Vineland, New Jersey (named for its many vineyards), and it was common for him to receive bushels of the fruit as payment for dental services.  Experimenting at night, Welch tried to create a grape beverage that would not ferment and become alcoholic.  Fermentation, the dentist knew, occurred when the natural sugar in grape juice was converted to alcohol by yeast particles that collected in the fruit.  To prevent this, the yeast would have to be destroyed. Welch accomplished this by placing bottles of grape juice in pots of boiling water, and allowing the heat to kill the yeast.

His creation was called "Dr. Welch's Unfermented Wine," and the dentist tried to persuade churches to use it as the communion beverage.  But he met with great resistance.   Wine was a key part of the communion ceremony, and replacing it with anything else would be irreligious.

Welch, was very disappointed, because he had been temperance-minded since childhood.  His father, Abraham, a Watertown, New York merchant, was a hardworking family man who occasionally liked to drink whiskey from a jug he kept in the cellar.  This led to terrible fights with Mrs. Welch, who thought alcohol was from the devil.  His parents' arguments most likely helped shape young Thomas' belief in the evil nature of alcohol.  This conviction was further strengthened as he grew more active in the church, and  became a minister for several years before becoming a dentist.

The prohibitionist dentist kept Welch busy serving the cause of temperance. He became a self-appointed warden of Vineland's dry law, seeing to it that anybody who sold intoxicants within the city limits was prosecuted.  During 1870-71 he led crusades in the neighboring communities of Millville and Bridgeton, to convert the towns to Vineland's prohibitionist ways. 

For the next twenty years, Dr. Welch's Unfermented Wine remained a family refreshment, enjoyed by the Welches at home, and sold to a few churches for communion purposes.  In 1892 Thomas Welch's youngest son, Dr. Charles Welch (he too was a dentist), decided to test out his belief that the grape drink could be successful as a commercial product.  Borrowing $5,000 from his father, the forty-year-old Charles set up a juice production facility on the family's property.  To make his product more appealing to the general public, he changed its name to Welch's Grape Juice.  The following year, Charles introduced his beverage at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, by giving out free samples of Welch's Grape Juice to millions of fairgoers.  As a result of this national exposure, demand for the drink grew so much that Charles gave up his dental practice, and devoted his time to juice making.

Following his success at the Chicago fair, Charles Welch launched a huge advertising campaign in national magazines such as the Epicure, Carter's Monthly, and McClure's.  To attract the attention of readers, Welch inserted word puzzles and contests in his ads, once offering $10 to the person who could form the largest number of words from the phrase "Welch's Grape Juice."  (The winner came up with 1,366 words.)  Charles also promoted the juice as a temperance beverage and healing tonic.  A famous company ad featured a maiden with a glass of grape juice and the caption, "The lips that touch Welch's are all that touch mine." 

By 1897 Welch's Grape Juice was found at soda fountains alongside root beer and sarsaparilla, and Charles Welch had to  relocate the company to Westfield, New York, to be near a larger source of grapes.  Elderly Thomas Welch, who had invented the unfermented wine, remained in New Jersey, but he continued to be a silent partner in the business until his death in 1903.

The inventor of Welch's Grape Juice did not live to see his temperance dream realized with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919.  The growing national Prohibition movement provided a great boost to the revenues of the Welch company, by increasing the demand for grape juice as a social beverage in place of wine.

Welch's Grape Juice