Dr Welchs' wine

[jimzilla]

This bottle came in to my possession a while ago. It reads: Dr. Welch's Unfermented Wine Pure Grape Juice Vineland N.J." On the bottom is marked "16 oz" with a ghost of a "6" between 6 + oz. The seam only runs up to the base of the neck. My research revealed an interesting bit of history... this "wine" was the frontrunner to todays' Welchs Grape juice. Its' inventor, the good "Doctor" developed this grape juice because he believed kids should not be drinking real wine during church services. The unfermented wine business never caught on, but grape juice did! Now I am wondering what I should do with it? Would the company be interested in it? There is a rust spot on the front and the inside is milky/stained. People I have contacted have not been able to tell me if it has any worth besides it's history novelty. I guess I'm just throwing this out there for ideas and comments...Thanks!

 

[epackage]

Fairly common bottle at bottle shows....Welcome to the forum by the way...[]

 

[surfaceone]

Evening, Jim & Jim,

May not have much value, but it's a nice bottle, and it does have a lot of history. From failure to "The National Drink." Rebranded just prior to the Columbian Expo of '93, and then a whole lotta bottles after that.

Read some about it. Say "hey" to the Welchs:

"To Vineland there came in 1868 a dentist named Thomas Welch, a restless type of which the American nineteenth century seems to have had so many. English-born, but reared in upstate New York, he had been a Wesleyan preacher, then a doctor, and then a dentist, practicing in New York State and in Minnesota before fetching up in Vineland. He liked to experiment and to diversify: he had invented a stomach-soothing syrup, had made a trade in compounding and selling dental alloys, and had devised a "Sistem of Simplified Spelling."[51]

In Vineland, where he was communion steward to the Vineland Methodist Church, he began to take thought about the problem of wine in the sacrament. To Dr. Welch, and to many other ardent prohibitionists, the centrality of wine in the service of the Christian church was a rock of offense and a stone of stumbling. To the riddle of how Our Lord could possibly have recommended the Demon Rum—anything alcoholic was so identified in the circles to which Dr. Welch be-longed—as the symbol of His own sacrificial presence there seemed to be only one answer: the wine of these latter days was a sad corruption of the wine Our Savior knew, which must have been an innocuous temperance beverage suitable to divine purity. By what distortions and evasions of historical and philological evidence such people were able to sustain their conviction we need not trouble to discuss here.[52] The case is a clear instance, if one is needed, of the power of the wish over the fact...

"Four generations of the Welch family. Dr. Thomas Welch, the inventor of grape juice, is
seated; his son, Dr. Charles E. Welch, the successful promoter of the invention, stands
on the left. The picture dates from some time before 1903, when the elder Welch died." From.

Charles Welch moved operations to RED's backyard, Watkins Glen, and then on to Westfield. RED, I bet, will have some input, if he sees this...

From.

 

[AntiqueMeds]

The ealier bottles are fairly rare. I sold one years ago to one of the last descendants of the Welch family.
The original Dr Welch made the product , as you said for church use. Apparently the churchee people didnt like not getting their communion wine buzz. The product was a failure. Welch's son had the bright idea of selling it as grape juice for general consumption which obviously worked out well.

 

[ZZBabe]

I have the 8 oz Dr, Welchs ,unfermented wine ,not round skinny, anyone know about it?