The Maltese Falcon and Wine

This classic movie from 1941 is a great Film Noir in black and white. It's based on the 1930s book by Dashiell Hammett. Sam Spade is a San Francisco detective in 1928 that loves to drink whiskey. His partner, Archer, is knocked off almost immediately, working on a case. You end up with Sam smoothly moving through a word full of beautiful women, dangerous men and triple crosses.

This isn't a movie full of wine. It reeks of whiskey. First, Sam has a bottle by his bed when he goes home after the Archer murder. He drinks some whiskey from a square generic glass decanter with the Fat Man. When he returns to the Fat Man's home, he gets another 2 glasses of whiskey. Unfortunately these were drugged, and he goes out like a light.

Note that later, Sam refers to this as "slipping him a mickey". This is in reference to a famous bartender, Mickey Finn, back in the late 1800s in Chicago. He created a knock-out drink called a "Mickey Finn Special". Girls in his bar would deliberately feed these to men, lure them to a back room, steal their money and then throw them out.

Sam does offer Brigid a drink during their group discussion, but she refuses.

That's about it! I suppose hard boiled detectives didn't drink wine back in those days - they only went for the hard stuff.

Wine in Movies and Books