THE NEXT GENERATION OF UTAH: BOOTLEGGERS.

• Author: Griffin, Elle
• Position: Cover story

When my husband and I moved to Utah three years ago, we thought the same thing everyone else in the country did: Utah was the prohibition state. The one with all the liquor laws. It wasn't true. In fact, we've lived in states with much stricter liquor laws (Pennsylvania for one). But if there ever was an absence of actual restriction, there was at least a mindset of restriction. People thought Utah was dry, and in a way, that gave Utah an edge.

RELIGION & DISTILLING

Take a look at the states with the strictest liquor laws and you'll find they have one thing in common: religion. Pennsylvania had their Quakers, Massachusetts had their Puritans. By the time a constitutional ban was placed on the sale of alcoholic beverages--otherwise known as Prohibition-it was largely the Protestants who were to blame (Catholics and Lutherans were, of course, diametrically opposed).

THEN THERE WERE THE MORMONS

Like the governmental forces that closed national alcohol sales in 1920, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints became for the Utah alcohol industry a symbol of enforced morality--however accurately--and the gentiles were ready to rise up against it. Perhaps that is the very curiosity that led Utah to become one of the most innovative and interesting alcohol industries in the country. The Wild West, as it were. Because though the Quakers and Puritans have since diminished in social stature, the Mormons have remained. Ever enforcers of our better natures.

Certainly, Utah's culture has corralled around that very idea, and many Utah companies have capitalized on the state's pioneer parentage. Five Wives Vodka, comes to mind. As does Polygamy Porter by Wasatch Brewery. On the Mormon holiday "Pioneer Day," non-Mormons celebrate with the countercultural "Pie and Beer Day." And when the Broadway Show "Book of Mormon" came through Utah, the aptly named "Cook of Mormon" food truck sat perched outside to feed us.

PROHIBITION CULTURE (MINUS THE PROHIBITION)

That's not to say there aren't liquor laws in Utah, or that they aren't particularly strict. But our laws aren't so different from other states' laws. The only difference is that, in Utah, the culture that created them remains. When prohibition was enacted in New York City, close to 100,000 speakeasies opened in the law's first five years. But though the law has since been repealed, in Utah, the underground alcohol industry remains.

It's a tight-knit community of wine makers, brewers, and distillers...