A 1920s speakeasy is returning to San Francisco, legally this time. On November 5, 2026, the Alliance Française and Francophone Museum of San Francisco will host La Nuit au Musée: A Sip of the Roaring 20s, an evening dressed up as a Prohibition-era jazz joint, complete with period cocktails, French wine, a casino corner and a Francophone buffet. Guests are encouraged to come in flapper-style attire, and the venue at 1345 Bush Street runs from 6pm to 11pm.
The party has a serious hook, though: the untold story of how Napa Valley survived Prohibition between 1920 and 1933, largely thanks to French winemakers. Historian Rebecca Yerger will present the highlights, and the centrepiece is Georges de Latour, a Bordeaux immigrant who founded Beaulieu Vineyard in Rutherford in 1900 with his wife Fernande. As a devout Catholic, de Latour secured a license under the Volstead Act to produce sacramental wine for the Church — the only legal kind of wine in America during those dry years. The business boomed: Beaulieu expanded three times and reportedly earned the equivalent of a couple of million dollars supplying Catholic churches nationwide, a fortune at the time.
Other Napa producers were less lucky. Many ripped out vines and planted prunes, apples or olives, or sold grape juice; some quietly kept making wine for personal use or the black market, feeding speakeasies across California. Yerger will share those smuggling tales on the night.
The de Latours' influence stretched well past the cellar. They made cream of tartar from fermentation byproducts, produced rayon later used in WWII parachutes, and in 1905 imported 450,000 grape plants from France to help Napa fight phylloxera, the vine-killing disease. In 1938 they hired André Tchelistcheff, the winemaker credited with defining modern Napa style, and de Latour's vintages from 1936 onwards helped establish Napa Cabernet Sauvignon's reputation.
Music runs the whole evening. Saxophonist Charles Unger, a fixture of the San Francisco scene, plays jazz, R&B and world music, while the eight-piece La Gauloise All Stars run through French pop and rock anthems from the 1960s to the 90s.
For travellers, this is a rare chance to combine a themed night out in San Francisco with genuine wine history — especially if you're pairing it with a Napa Valley trip. Knowing the de Latour story adds real depth to a tasting at Beaulieu Vineyard in Rutherford, one of the valley's oldest estates, and reframes what you'll see in Napa: post-Prohibition cellars, Cabernet heritage and French fingerprints everywhere. Tickets and details go through the Alliance Française de San Francisco, and costumes are the spirit of the thing rather than optional decoration, so pack a feather headband or a slick three-piece suit.
