Looking a little further back on women and alcohol production - what I
found in Germany was that women, often widows or wives of poorer craftsmen,
often ran illegal stills in the 15th and 16th centuries.  Many were female
healers making distilled tonics - eventually this operation was taken over
by apothecaries, and the "old women" were forced out of the trade.  During
the 16th and early 17th century, women produced illegal spirits made of
grain for general consumption, while men had control of the legal brandy
industry and distilling for medicinal use.  Many of these women seem to
have learned the craft in the countryside, where controls were less
stringent than in the towns.  But as grain spirits gained popularity and
began to interfere with the brandy trade, the production of grain spirits
was taken over by male grocers and eventually distillers.  By the end of
the 17th century grain spirits (at least in the towns) were legal and in
the hands of men.  I don't know what happened after that - the "gin
epidemic" (in Germany "Brandy plague") of the 18th century might well have
provided opportunities for more illegal distillers, which seems to have
been the case in England, but I don't think anyone has looked at this in
Germany.  The process of men lobbying against female producers, and then
taking over the trade as it became more lucrative, parallels what Judith
Bennett found for brewing in England during the late middle ages (Ale, Beer
and Brewsters in England: Women's Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600; my
article on this is in Central European History 31/1-2, 1998, "Water of
Life, Water of Death: The Controversy over Brandy and Gin in Early Modern
Augsburg").
cheers
Ann Tlusty