Wine of Wyoming

“Wine of Wyoming” is a short story by American author Ernest Hemingway. First published in 1930 in Scribner’s Magazine, the story follows an unnamed narrator who goes on a trip through Wyoming with his friends during the period of Prohibition when making and consuming alcohol was criminalized. Along the way, they meet Madame Fontan and her husband, a French couple who own a restaurant business and secretly brew beer and wine. Their brief stay with the Fontans challenges their negative preconceptions of the foreign couple, revealing them as lonely rather than haughty. After its publication, the story was relatively unrecognized, despite critical acclaim. However, it is now considered one of Hemingway’s most under-rated works, and a classic literary example of the capacity of sympathy.

“Wine of Wyoming” opens as the narrator is drinking a beer at the home of French immigrants Madame Fontan and her husband. Together, they take refuge from the hot sun of the summer. The narrator gazes at the faraway mountains, whose snow-capped peaks evoke a yearning for their unattainable cold. In contrast, the nearby town and roads are dusty and scorched. Next, the narrator turns to details of the Fontans’ home: it is extremely tidy and well maintained, in stark contrast to the homes of most people in Wyoming and the American West. A band of drunk Americans drives up to the house and orders Madame Fontan to give them beer, with an implied threat of telling law enforcement about their brewery. Madame Fontan lies, telling them that they are all out.

As they leave, Madame Fontan expresses disdain for American drinking culture, viewing their proclivity for getting belligerently drunk as representative of American character. She and her husband relate to the narrator and his friends that she and her husband are averse to many other aspects of American culture. Among these is its abundance of churches, which Madame Fonran sees as a form of oppression of Catholics like her and her husband, who live more sparsely and can not afford churches. She expresses dismay that Schmidt will likely not win the presidential election because he is Catholic (in reference to Al Smith, the first Catholic person to run for president). Madame Fontan’s rant moves on to the subject of her daughter-in-law, who is part Native American. She complains that her daughter-in-law is overweight and only feeds their son low-quality food such as canned beans.



Madame Fontan repeatedly states her annoyance with her husband for being too attached to wine. The narrator agrees with many of the Fontans’ claims and aspects of their worldview, impressing Madame Fontan, who invites him to dinner. Because their newest batch of wine is not yet fermented enough to drink, Madame Fontan sends him off, bidding him come back the next day, when she can serve a quality dinner. The narrator assures her that he will return. However, he is too tired to return the next day. When he returns on the second day, he finds Monsieur Fontan drunk from the three bottles of wine reserved for their dinner. Fontan attempts to get more wine from his son’s home but finds it locked in a cabinet (implying that he has attempted this before). When Fontan returns, the narrator departs. He expresses regret that he left the Fontans in such a vulnerable state, unable to be hospitable and with Mr. Fontan humiliated about his alcoholism. He reflects that he will never get to taste the “Wine of Wyoming”—now a symbol for the impasse that exists between people in the American West.