What It Was Like To Celebrate New Year's Eve 100 Years Ago

Posted by Abbie Anker on Friday, May 17, 2024

Alcoholic beverages have long comprised an important part of festivities in Europe and the U.S., according to Imbibe Magazine. But when it comes to New Year's Eve, champagne has cornered the market. The evolution of champagne as the drink of choice on December 31 has a long and complicated history. But it's safe to say that the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the middle class had something to do with it.

In 1850, champagne sales sat around 6 million bottles per year. But by 1900, this figure skyrocketed to 28 million, with a good portion of the bubbly beverage dedicated to ringing in another year. By the early 1900s in New York City, many establishments had "champagne only" policies after 9 p.m. on New Year's Eve, as per Wine Bid, a practice often attributed first to CafĂ© Martin (a.k.a. Martin's), a high-end "lobster palace," (via Imbibe).

One person writing in 1910 noted, "To get a table at all on New Year's Eve is difficult. When you get one, you must drink what you are told," as quoted by Imbibe Magazine. That said, Prohibition put a damper on bubbly serving at legit establishments in the 1920s, which crippled New York's iconic lobster palaces, per historian Angela Tate's blog, Edwardian Promenade. Like other alcoholic beverages, champagne went underground in America in the 1920s. But it would have been freely savored in other parts of the world as a video of a New Year's party in Berlin, Germany, from the 1920s demonstrates (via YouTube).

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