He Would've Made a Cool Brand Icon

Like the Quaker Oats guy, or even Cap'n Crunch. Can't you see that serious but slightly smiling face on a label, the wild hair and beard alerting you to what must've been an original personality?

Born in England, he came to America as a boy, living in New York, later Minnesota and finally New Jersey. He was schooled at a seminary in upstate New York. He became a physician, later changing professions to dentistry. He founded a dental products company and a dentistry journal.

At the age of 44, he discovered a way to pasteurize wine so that fermentation was stopped. A staunch prohibitionist, he convinced local churches to use his unfermented wine for communion services.

The man above is Dr. Thomas Bramwell Welch. He founded Welch’s Grape Juice Company. Because it sounded better than Crazy Preacherman’s Fake Wine.

And why am I posting this? Because I just finished a small bottle of Welch’s grape juice and noted the “since 1869” on the label, which made me curious. So I looked it up. On Wikipedia.

Remember when you had to go to a library to find out useless stuff?