Wine, Women, and Saloons

 

(Wild West Magazine) … Western wine rooms sought a more gender-inclusive mix of clientele. The name itself was a way of circumventing Victorian strictures against women in saloons without driving off male customers or incurring the wrath of moral “uplifters.”
Few men of the era expected or particularly wanted to turn around at a public bar to find a woman hoisting one beside him. With that in mind, some entrepreneurial proprietors fixed up wine rooms out back for female drinkers. Continued