Disguising the fake liquor.
The bootlegger needed to go to great lengths to ensure that the deception of cheap homemade booze being sold as high-end liquor was successful. The high-priced liquor of Europe was elaborately packaged, and there were many pitfalls to be avoided when counterfeiting it successfully. One of the matters of least concern was taste, at least after Prohibition had been in place for a few years and the palate of American consumers became less discerning. Prohibition gave birth to the rise of cocktails, which though they existed before the ban on alcohol, known as “fancy drinks” became much more popular during the 1920s.
Some beverages had distinctively shaped bottles, which needed to be copied, and bootleggers provided American bottle manufacturers with samples, which were quickly emulated by the glass companies thankful for the work. Labels could be copied, but many bootleggers imported the real thing, usually from overseas counterfeiters. Corks required the stampings which were present on the genuine article, and the bootleggers hired corking companies to provide them. Scotch bottles were wrapped in straw before shipping, to prevent breakage, and some bootleggers went to the lengths of importing straw, which was of a slightly different color than that available in the United States.
Bottles were wrapped tightly in paper, soaked in salt water, and then dried, causing the paper to stick to the glass, an indication of a voyage across salt water, rather than manufacture in a warehouse in Bayonne, New Jersey or Cicero, Illinois. The cost of the deception was considerable, passed on to the customers who paid dearly for being sold goods both illegal to buy and counterfeit in nature. That bootlegger grew wealthy at the top of their organizational chains is an indication of the size of the demand for liquor by the American public, which grew throughout Prohibition rather than diminishes, despite the efforts of the government to quash it.