The Pa. Liquor Control Board’s (PLCB) decision last week to approve revisions to Advisory Notice 25 won’t change the wine-buying landscape like Act 39 did in 2016, when grocery and convenience stores and beverage craft distillers were given the go-ahead to sell Pennsylvania wines.
But it certainly should help increase the production around the state of fermented fruit beverages (FFB) around the state, a grape-based product that’s allowed by law to contain no more than 8.5 percent alcohol. As much as anything it’s a cash-flow wine for producers and a convenience item for stores such as beer retailers, who are not permitted to sell what would be considered traditional wine.
Advisory Notice 25 establishes requirements for products to be sold as alcoholic cider, mead and fermented fruit beverages. Here is a link to the advisory.
Per a press release sent out by the PLCB last week: “While such beverages are generally treated as beer under state law, they are classified as wine under federal law, which has led to confusion over labeling requirements and marketing and sales opportunities. To resolve this conflict, the PLCB has revised Advisory Notice 25 to remove the prohibition against such products referring to themselves in product packaging as ‘wine’ or similar names.”
It’s a response to a complaint by Spring Gate Vineyard and Winery owner Marty Schoffstall, who disagreed with the label requirement that the word “wine” or a grape name not appear on the label or outside of the container. As he explained earlier this week, the PLCB stance was contradicting the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), which must give its approval on any type of labeling before a wine-based product can be sold.
“The fact of the matter is that labeling is a federal issue,” Schoffstall said. “They were mandating that wine be eliminated from the label, which is not what the law says. It was a situation where we were stuck between state law and federal law.”
Permission to make and market a fermented fruit beverage came last August, but the PLCB required the products to be registered, which in part delayed things until March of this year. But the disagreement over what was allowed to be put on the label or container continued until last week.
The change is significant because while producers could sell a single varietal FFB (Spring Gate, for instance, sells Concord, Niagara and Blush Niagara in its Just Grape series), any product that has more than one varietal in it is mandated by the feds to have the word “wine” on the label. Thus, the quandary.
Schoffstall said the rule change will allow him to start selling Spring Gate products such as Deuce (a blend of Concord and Niagara) and Troika (a blend of three grapes) with the word “wine” on the packaging. Simply, this change would put them and others making blends in compliance with the amended state regulation.
SpringGate, located outside Harrisburg in Lower Paxton Township, already has several products on the market, packaging these FFBs in boxes, bottles and pouches. York County’s Allegro Winery is using bottles and neighbor Wyndridge Farm is using cans. Montgomery County’s Cardinal Hollow Winery, which made a name for itself by starting to make jalapeno wine a few years ago, is putting its product in a bottle.
The Allegro Winery Unplugged series of fermented fruit beverages.
It figures that others will be looking at starting to make this lower-end option of wine that will follow the lead of Spring Gate and Allegro, who have decided to sell them through beer retailers. Several in York County were contacted Friday and don’t carry them, although one shop said it was deciding whether to carry the FFBs. Shrewsbury Beer and Soda in southern York County said it had Spring Gate’s boxed FFBs and the Allegro line in stock, both priced around $10.
Noting that a majority of the beer distributors are “mom and pop” and locally owned, “they should be the natural partners with the local winery,” Schoffstall said. “It’s a much more natural alignment than trying to get into a multibillion-dollar grocery chain.” While Act 39 gave wineries far more pop to their distribution, Schoffstall said this in some ways could do the same. “I could see it become 35 percent of the winery business in two to three years,” he said. “This is a huge growth opportunity."
One group watching largely from the sidelines was the Pennsylvania Beer Alliance, representing 30 beer wholesale distributors in the state, which has its own interests in the future of FFBs.
Jay Wiederhold, the president of the alliance, said this week that his organization is working to get the current definition of fermented fruit beverages amended to include products that are marketed as “wine” or “wine spritzers” or contain some kind of wine in the product.
“We can currently sell different FFBs but need a change to the law to allow us to sell products such as MOVO that is made by MolsonCoors,” he said. “These are new products that the consumer could get more convenient access to by going through the beer wholesale system. Again, these are products that are 8.5% ABV or lower.”
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