LINCOLN, Neb.
Eastern Nebraska apples and corn from all corners of the state could be in cocktails by this time next year.
A legislative committee on Monday heard arguments for allowing distilled spirits such as whiskey and vodka to be made at retail locations, much like beers are made at brew pubs.
Nationally the number of so-called micro-distilleries is growing as the demand for alcohol products perceived to be more high-end has increased.
Upstream Brewing Co., an Omaha brew pub, is pushing for the bill (LB 549), which was introduced by Sen. John Synowiecki of Omaha.
Company officials said they want to begin making light liquors such as vodka using some of the same equipment they use to make beer.
For more info contact Zac Triemert: ztriemert@upstreambrewing.com
============== ======

LB 549 provides for a microdistillery license and allows any party holding a microdistillery license to manufacture and retail their own spirits within their licensed retail location similar to the craft brewing law for beer. The bill also mandates that the holder of the microdistillery license shall not be allowed to engage in the wholesale distribution of spirits.

The link to the Nebraska bill
http://uniweb.legislature.ne.gov/Apps/BillFinder/finder.php? page=view_do c&DocumentID=85
===================

More on Distillery Pubs

Legislature votes for craft spirits to be made in state.

LINCOLN - Diners at Omaha's Upstream Brewing Company soon may get to sip on a smooth malt whiskey or a cool gin made just a few steps from their table.
The Legislature gave the first of three rounds of approval Tuesday to a bill that would allow small-scale distilleries to operate in the state much the way brew pubs do now.
Legislative Bill 549, introduced by State Sen. John Synowiecki of Omaha, is modeled after the state's microbrewery laws.
Those laws allow restaurants to have small-scale brewing operations and to sell the resulting beers directly to their customers. Some of those microbreweries also bottle their beers for sale at other retail outlets.
Similarly, LB 549 would allow restaurants to operate small distilleries. They could sell their whiskey, rum, gin and other hard liquors to restaurant patrons. The liquor also could be sold at retail liquor outlets by going through a wholesaler.
Synowiecki said the bill has the potential to turn Nebraska corn, wheat and other goods into a variety of unique products. It could add jobs and draw tourists interested in sampling what the state has to offer.
"This is having an ability for Nebraska-made products to compete with other products," he said.
The owners of Upstream Brewing, which has two brew pubs in Omaha, brought the idea to Synowiecki. Current state law allows for distilleries in Nebraska but does not allow them to sell directly to customers.
Zac Triemert, brewmaster for Upstream Brewing, said the company wants to set up a micro-distillery alongside its existing microbrewery. They are looking at an investment of about $400,000.
"Our goal is to create craft spirits and to be Nebraska's first post-prohibition distillery," he said.
Triemert spent the past year getting a master's degree in brewing and distilling in Edinburgh, Scotland. He hopes to make a variety of liquors, including gin, rum, bourbon and especially single-malt whiskey. The specialty liquors would be available in the restaurants and possibly elsewhere.
If LB 549 passes, Triemert said, it would be next year before the first Nebraska-made liquors could be offered to Upstream customers.
"This is very much about passion and quality and excellence," he said.
But his dream first had to get past Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha, who objected to a provision allowing micro- distilleries to make up to 21,000 gallons of spirits per year. He said Nebraska does not need any more alcohol.
In response, lawmakers voted to reduce the maximum allowed per micro-distillery to 10,000 gallons a year. Triemert said the lower number should be no problem. He does not expect to produce that much for years.
BY MARTHA STODDARD
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU
===================

Catching In The Rye at WhiskyFest New York
By
Hank Stewart

“Fifteen minutes until they let the riff-raff in,” I overheard a man say to his friend. I looked at my watch. The time was 6:15 p.m., and, indeed, there were only 15 minutes left in the VIP tasting session at WhiskyFest New York. At 6:30, the gates would fling open, and in would pour the unwashed hordes who only paid $115 (as opposed to the VIPs’ $155) to be here.
Now in its ninth year, there is, quite honestly, nothing riff- raffy about WhiskyFest, a large-scale tasting event produced by Malt Advocate now running in three cities.
“I love WhiskyFest,” Dave Pickerell, Master Distiller of Maker’s Mark, told me. “There’s a great camaraderie between the distillers, the consumers and the trade here. You just can’t beat it.”
Chris Morris, Master Distiller of Brown-Forman concurred. “This is a terrific event,” he said. “The camaraderie among the distillers is a lot of fun. We get to taste theirs, and they get to taste ours.” Morris then poured me a taste of his Old Forester 2005 Birthday Bourbon, a limited edition (41 barrels), “true vintage dated” beauty that was distilled on May 25, 1993, in honor of George Garvin Brown’s birthday.
Held November 6 at the Marriot Marquis, the numbers behind the event are impressive: 1500 attendees (90% male); 200+ whiskies served; 65 tasting tables; 12 industry expert speakers; 3 sponsored “experience rooms.” And that’s just New York. The entire operation is picked up and repeated again in Chicago and San Francisco.
I asked Lincoln Henderson of Suntori how the crowds differed from city to city. “The people in Chicago are more laid back. The people in New York and San Francisco are about the same. In all three cities, the people are very knowledgeable about whisky.”
WhiskyFest Director Amy Westlake had a slightly different take. “The New York crowds are more demanding and sophisticated. In Chicago, we see a lot more couples. There’s more of an atmosphere of friendliness. In New York, they say, ‘Give me your most expensive.’ In Chicago, it’s, ‘Whaddaya got?’”
About this time, I bumped into Bob Brewer and John Dannerbeck of the Anchor Brewing Company. They reported sales of their Old Portero were so brisk, it was on the verge of being sold out. This went to the core of something I had been wondering about for a while; was rye whisky the Next Big Thing?
I had no concrete evidence of rye’s rise, but it did seem like I had been encountering a flurry of articles about it. Dannerbeck confirmed my hunch. “Rye is extremely hot,” he said.
This sentiment was echoed by Mathew Biegen, Global Sr. Brand Manager of Wild Turkey. “The rye category is definitely picking up,” he said. “Consumers are getting permission to go into brown spirits, and they’re looking for more flavor. Rye gives them that.” (The irony that rye was not among the four marques Wild Turkey was pouring that night was not lost on this reporter.)
Brown-Forman’s Morris disagreed, claiming rye’s popularity was “media-driven hype.” He said there’s not much rye whisky being made, and his company had no plans to make any more.
I took a break from the rye question to attend one of the seminars. I found myself in a breakout room attending “The Great Whisk(e)y Debate; Scotch or Bourbon,” a session that promised to “decide once and for all, which is the world’s premiere whiskey.” (I wondered if that spelling revealed a bias.)
Representing Bourbon was Fred Noe, Jim Beam’s great grandson. In Scotch’s corner was Richard Paterson, Master Blender, The Dalmore. Noe presented first, and as he walked the participants through a tasting of his Knob Creek and Booker’s Bourbons, he launched a few good-natured barbs toward Paterson, though he admitted he “had nothing against Scotch.” Noe’s home-spun charm and stories of growing up in one of Bourbon’s first families won favor with the crowd. Of Booker’s Bourbon, Noe said, “It’ll make a bad day better real fast.” Finally, it was time to concede to podium to Paterson. “Well, I guess I’d better let Richard speak,” Noe said. “Hell, he did come all the way from France.”
Paterson fired back, claiming the portly Noe was just jealous because he didn’t look as good in a kilt. Paterson then turned his focus on the audience members, chiding them for not having been to Scotland, where there are currently 98 distilleries in operation. In a fierce and frenetic brogue, Paterson said he considered Bourbon “a bit of a fad that will fade out,” then led attendees through a delightful tasting of The Dalmore’s 12 and 21-year-olds.
By the end of the presentation, the debate seemed a long way from settled, but enough laughs had flown around the room that no one seemed to care. Noe got to give the parting remarks, and noted that Bourbon has been known to grace the palates of “Mark Twain, Lyndon Johnson, and Hootie and the Blowfish.”
After this and a few more select tastings, I was beginning to lose interest in the whole rye trend issue, when Lew Bryson directed me over to meet the newest rye purveyor in the room, LeNell Smothers.
After several hours of being trapped in a room (albeit a big one) with hundreds of middle-aged men, Smothers was a breath of red-headed, curvaceous air. A misplaced Alabaman, she told me she had opened a liquor store in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn in a rich, southern voice that was smoother than any whisky in the room. She also had decided to produce and market her own barrel proof whiskey, LeNell’s Red Hook Rye. Smothers coyly deflected my questions as to who was actually making her whiskey (it’s someone in Kentucky), and I decided not to press her on it. I mean, here’s a nice woman from Alabama trying to sell whiskey in Brooklyn, who am I to give her a hard time? (LeNell’s whiskey, by the way, is aggressively flavored, but still smooth and easy to drink [with water, of course]. Whoever it is that’s making her whiskey is doing a nice job.)
So what does the future hold for WhiskyFest? According to Malt Advocate President John Hansell, more of the same. Next year, the event will move to a larger ballroom in the same hotel, and be able to accommodate 2000 people. Will there be more distillers, as well? “Not likely,” Hansell said, “they’re all here already.”
--30--
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Open Letter to TTB and ADI members

Small distilleries are subject to the same complex reporting procedures as their larger cousins. The monthly production, storage and processing accounting system is perhaps not so cumbersome for a large distillery with a staff specifically to manage such conformance protocols. However, small operations such as Tuthilltown Spirits, with a staff of two, are producing in a year what some larger distilleries produce in a day.
We hope you will support a move to revise the reporting procedures and requirements for small distilleries, so that they can condense production, storage and processing reporting to quarterly periods.
Additionally, Federal statistical information based on reports of wineries and breweries help those industries to survey the industry and plan for the future. Not so the distilling statistics, which you may have noticed have not been updated for over ten years. These figures are simply not available, though distilleries file copious reports of raw material consumption and production numbers. Considering the amount of Excise taxes distillers pay on their products, we believe it is not unreasonable that we should have some benefit from that tax payment. And considering that the taxes distillers pay do not match the taxes paid on alcohol produced by brewers and vintners, it is unfair that distillers should have no access to the information they provide.
The following letter went out to our Congressman Maurice Hinchey’s office today, asking him to act on this issue. I urge you to do the same in your state.
Ralph

I’d like to suggest amending the Fed Alcohol Control law.

There are now 88 small distilleries operating in the US, 12 of those in New York State.
We are required under Fed law to file monthly production, storage and processing reports which are extremely complex and time consuming. These are designed for major distilleries with conformance departments and legal staff to manage paperwork.
We are not unlike others our size, a two man operation and it is a hardship to have one person tied up for a full day each month filling out information on our little operation. It is understandable for larger distillers to report monthly, who are producing as much product in a day as we produce in a year. But even at maximum capacity allowed by our license, we may not produce more than 100 gallons a day, every day, all year.
Additionally, if you check the TTB site for statistics about distilleries (link: http://www.ttb.gov/spirits/stats.shtml), you will find wineries and brewery stats are up to date, but the last available year for distillery stats is 1995. For the ridiculously high excise taxes we pay, we are not even getting use of the figures for improving our position in the marketplace and predicting trends, both of which would result in higher taxes paid to the Fed.

I propose two actions:

1. Amend alcohol law to permit distilleries with under 50,000 proof gallons of production per year to file their reports (production, processing and storage) on a quarterly basis;
2. Calling upon the TTB to update the statistics and make current information available to the tax paying distilleries for their use.
These simple changes will make it practical for the growing number of micro distillers to keep up with the reporting requirements and also make the reporting of their numbers useful to them in return when the stats are up to date.

Ralph Erenzo
Tuthilltown Spirits
Gardiner, NY
===================

SIPPABLE SOUTH

Specialty Southern spirits capture the hearts (and wallets) of those looking for something different.

By JOHN T. EDGE
For the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

LeNell Smothers, owner of LeNell's: A Wine and Spirits Boutique in Red Hook, on the industrial fringe of Brooklyn, N.Y., is a native of Alabama, a lithe woman with a caramel accent. She's the kind of retailer who displays gin bottles in a claw-foot tub and sells copies of Mixologist: the Journal of the American Cocktail by the register.
Expatriate Southerners rifle her shelves for Kentucky treasures like 18-year-old rye from Black Maple Hill and 23- year-old bourbon, cosseted in a velvet bag, from Pappy Van Winkle. Not to mention curiosities like Isaiah Morgan Rye, an unaged whiskey from West Virginia, and Old Gristmill Authentic American Corn Whisky, a moonshine-style spirit from the Hudson Valley of New York.
Smothers built her business stocking hard-to-find artisanal American spirits, ranging in price from a low of, say, $25 a bottle to more than $100 Her customers are not swillers.
They are aficionados who endorse William Faulkner's belief that "civilization begins with distillation." And their numbers are growing, as a new generation realizes that liquor is more than mere fuel for a buzz.
"I like to drink the good stuff," Smothers says when asked how she came to be a curator of craft distillates. "Plus, owning this place keeps me out of bars." (In Atlanta, where no retailer claims the quirky depth of LeNell's, it's a little harder to stay out of the bars. Indeed, the best places to draw a bead on these spirits are bars ensconced within upscale restaurants like Repast, Restaurant Eugene and Trois, which stocks a selection of rye whiskeys that even Smothers would covet.)
Smothers' inventory reflects a renaissance in craft distilling, which, by the way, is the prevailing term used to describe quality-focused operators who often work smaller, copper- pot stills instead of giant, columned rectifiers.
"After the microbrewery boom, small distilleries are the next step," says Bill Owens, president of the American Distilling Institute. "More are coming on line. A lot of it's happening beyond the South. Oregon, Michigan, they're going great guns. In the South, there's real opportunity. Southerners have always appreciated good whiskey."
The renaissance, it seems, is not restricted to whiskeys. Along with various liqueurs and brandies, the lady from Alabama stocks Prichard's Fine Rum, an artisanal spirit from Tennessee that may come as close as any Southern spirit to marrying the ideals of the 18th-century farmer-distiller with a 21st-century connoisseurship of handmade goods.

Regional flavor

Phil Prichard, proprietor of Prichard's Distillery, is a 67-year- old former dental fabricator who favors a rakish green felt hat and cultivates a gregarious personality. He does business in Kelso, Tenn., near the Alabama line, down the road from the famously dry hamlet where Jack Daniel's is made.
He knows his region, his place. When a conservative Christian preacher questioned how he rationalized his vocation, Prichard responded by citing Proverbs 31:6: "Give strong drink unto him who is about to perish. Let him drink and forget his problems and remember his misery no more."
Prichard anticipates a future when distilled spirits will once again reflect local crops and local tastes. (The last time that was the case, moonshine - covertly distilled, under cover of night, from field corn - was the Southern spirit of record.)
"Our first rum went in barrels in 1999," Prichard says as he troops from the paint-stripped wooden schoolhouse that serves as his office, through the basketball gymnasium that is his warehouse, to what might best be described as a shed out back where he works a copper pot still. "We wanted to make traditional American rum. The idea wasn't to run Bacardi out of business.
"I just figured that if we made something hand-distilled and hand-bottled, people would pay more for quality," says the man whose products are sold in 30 states. His goods - an amber-hued rum that spends three years in charred oak barrels and recalls a young French brandy, and an unaged white rum that smacks of butterscotch Lifesavers - make strong arguments for those possibilities.

Art, and craft

Prichard is an artisan. Increasingly, advocates use that word when talk turns to craft distilling. The choice is apt. Artisanship resonates with Southerners, who in recent years have rediscovered the people behind the generations-old work of ham curing and the hand-me-down knowledge of preserving jams and jellies.
When it comes to the South's native spirit, artisan also describes the men (it's almost always men) who designate single-barrel bottlings from larger distillery runs. Some, like the late Elmer T. Lee, the man behind Blanton's, which debuted way back in 1984 as the first commercially bottled single-barrel bourbon, plot barrel rows in rickhouses, the aging warehouses where, in contact with charred oak, clear corn and rye whiskeys take on distinctive red-brown color and sweet-spicy taste.
Lee and his inheritors have learned to manipulate a number of rickhouse variables, including stowage in hot spots - peripheries like outside walls and rafter niches - where whiskeys expand and contract more readily, penetrating deeper into particular barrels, resulting in distinctive bottlings that can be more complex, more nuanced than the norm.
More recently, others, like Julian Van Winkle of Louisville, Ky., maker of Pappy Van Winkle bourbon, have earned their reputations as - to borrow a term from the wine industry - negociants, seeking out older barrels of whiskeys that had been cast aside or tucked away. Thanks to their efforts, 15- and 18- and 20-year-old bourbons and ryes are no longer rare; they are, among an informed set, de rigueur.

Weight of history

All spirits, no matter their age, come with histories. Not all of them are pretty. Phil Prichard knows that. So does any thinking distiller. For starters, there are the addictive and sometimes debilitating effects of alcohol, which, common belief holds, are more vexing when delivered at higher proof. That's what Thomas Jefferson had in mind. In 1818, he wrote, "No nation is drunken where wine is cheap; and none sober, where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage."
And then there's the less subjective stuff: Rum fueled the slave trade.
During the 1700s, merchants plowed profits from rum - distilled in New England from molasses (a byproduct of sugar refining) - into the purchase of enslaved Africans. Upon arrival in the American South and the West Indies, traders sold those men, women and children. With the proceeds, they bought sugar and molasses. When the traders returned to New England, they sold the sugar and molasses to distillers, completing the final leg of what came to be known as the triangle trade.
For these reasons, and a range of others including religious prohibitions, Southern distillation of craft spirits has lagged behind the rest of the country. That's changing, however, as home-brewers discover that corn beer is one step removed from corn whiskey and tinkerers like Prichard figure out that stills need not be gigantic Seussian contraptions.

Spirit of place

New Southern spirits now debut with some frequency. Many aim for terroir, for geographical and cultural specificity, but settle for solutions that are, at best, imperfect, at worst, gimmicky.
Firefly Vodka, sold out of Charleston, S.C., is distilled in Florida, where it's flavored with wine fermented from Lowcountry-grown muscadines. McKendric Mesquite-Mellowed Whiskey claims a birthplace in Texas but relies on a charcoal filtration and flavoring process popularized in Tennessee. Clyde May's Conecuh Ridge Alabama Style Whiskey is distilled in Kentucky and cut with spring water trucked in from somewhere southeast of Montgomery.
Distilling a spirit that is of a place and reflects local traditions isn't easy. Prichard knows this. He would like to use sorghum, a locally grown grass that yields thick syrup similar to sugar cane molasses. But government regulations stipulate that all rum must be made from cane. Prichard assents, buying his cane molasses from Louisiana. But he doesn't like it.
"I've got a bunch of Mennonites over in Finger [Tenn.] who want to sell me sorghum molasses," Prichard says as he taps a barrel, transferring an experimental rum to a beaker, then to a snifter. "That would close the loop." That also might change how he markets his products. If Prichard gets his way, the coil on his still will drip not with great rum made in Tennessee, but great Tennessee rum.
Prichard understands the disconnect between what he preaches and what he distills. He recently began working with a Kentucky company to produce an unconventional twice-barreled bourbon, aged in oak for seven years at still proof and then an additional two years at a lower, bottle proof.
Although he wants to bring that process in-house and stoke his still with locally raised corn, so far the closest Prichard has come to making a truly local spirit may have been when he ran a private bottling of Volvka Vodka, distilled from castoff potato starch sourced at the nearby Frito Lay potato chip plant.

Moonshine, upscaled

Talk of distilling circles back, inevitably, to moonshine, scourge of revenue agents, catalyst of the stock car racing circuit. While it would be a mistake to argue that a new age of moonshiners is in league with people like Prichard, it wouldn't be a big mistake.
The best distillers of illicit whiskey, according to Matthew Rowley, whose history and practicum "Moonshine!" is forthcoming from Lark Books, are artisans, too. And, no, Rowley says, it doesn't matter if they're making white dog from refined sugar, corn whiskey from heirloom grains, rye whiskey according to 18th-century manuscripts, or rum from ribbon cane syrup.
Rowley believes the ranks of extra-legal distillers are growing. Some cook down grain mash to avoid taxes, he says, but an equal - and growing - number want to either "get in touch with their heritage" or revel in the "technical challenges of making better whiskeys."
He wonders if home distillers will follow in the wake of home-brewers. He believes a day may come when distilling for personal use is not a prosecutable federal offense. He, like Prichard, hopes that the age-old tradition of farmer- distillers will rekindle.
Rowley may be on to something. In 2005, West Virginia established the category of mini-distilleries, which produce fewer than 20,000 gallons of alcohol a year, and - this part is important - require that at least 75 percent of raw products come from the state.

'A taste of time'

Don't look for other Southern states to follow West Virginia's lead. Not this year, at least. For drinkers in search of distinctive spirits with Southern pedigrees, however, queer and lovely possibilities glimmer on the moonlit horizon.
Recently, Ted Breaux, a native of New Orleans, began distilling historical liqueurs in France. He ships genuine absinthe - the anise-flavored spirit spiked with the supposedly psychoactive wormwood - back to the States.
Instead of aiming for a taste of place, he aims for a taste of time. Reverse-engineered from a surviving pre-Prohibition bottle, his absinthe reflects a style popular in New Orleans in the 1800s. Cut with water, it clouds, then blooms with scents of camphor and mint.
Alas, Breaux's absinthe is not among the spirits you will find at a store like LeNell's, for, back in 1912, the U.S. Department of Agriculture banned distillation and sales of the drink. Consumption and possession, however, remain legal to this day, and a quick Internet search may allow you to take matters - and a bottle of craft distillate - into your own hands.
John T. Edge is director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi. To survey SFA oral histories or register for SFA events - including the April 20-21 Day Camp in and around Florence, Ala.

go to \http:// www.southernfoodways.com.

Things to know, spirits to seek

Whiskey is made from three ingredients: grain, water and yeast.
In the South, the primary grain is corn, used in combination with malted barley, rye and wheat. The prevalence of wheat, the style popularized by Maker's Mark, results in a softer whiskey. The prevalence of rye yields a raspier whiskey.
Bourbon is whiskey made from at least 51 percent corn. To be called straight bourbon, it must be aged in new charred- oak barrels for a minimum of two years. Woodford Reserve is a widely available premium bourbon.
Compared with bourbon, two things distinguish Tennessee whiskeys like Jack Daniel's and George Dickel: They must be made in Tennessee, and they must seep through a charcoal filtration system.
Single-barrel whiskeys are just that, bottles of whiskey sourced from a single barrel, chosen by a master distiller for superior qualities. Blanton's was the first. Evan Williams makes a consistently good single barrel at a very favorable price.
Small-batch bourbons are one-offs, small runs of special recipes done by larger distillers. Often a larger distiller will do batch production and aging for an artisan who lacks proper facilities. Among recent entries in this category are the Experimental Collection bourbons from Buffalo Trace, packaged as a set of three 375-milliliter bottles. The barrel in which the Fire Pot Barrel bourbon aged was heated to 102 degrees for 23 minutes to dry the wood, resulting in a whiskey with tobacco-y tannins.
Rum is distilled from fermented molasses and, sometimes, sugar cane juice. In addition to Prichard's (available at Green's and other well-stocked package stores), another Southern craft distiller of rum is New Orleans Rum, makers of the Cane brand.
===================

Standards of Identity for the Craft Distiller

by Dave Bateman, Industry Analyst, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB)

What Are the Standards of Identity for Distilled Spirits? The regulations in 27 CFR part 5 establish standards of identity for distilled spirits products and categorize these products according to various classes and types. As used in part 5, the term "class" refers to a general category of spirits, such as "whisky" or "brandy." There are 12 different classes of distilled spirits recognized in part 5 of the TTB regulations. The term "type" refers to a subcategory within a class of spirits.

Subpart C of 27 CFR part 5 outlines the requirements that must be met for the classes and types of distilled spirits in order for you to properly designate and label your product. Why Are the Standards Important to You?

If you intend to produce a specific class of distilled spirit, and want to be able to print that type of spirit on your label, you must meet the minimum standards described in section 5.22 of the TTB regulations, the standards of identity for distilled spirits. For instance, the Class 1 definition in section 5.22(a) explains that the type, vodka, must first be distilled at or above 190° proof as a neutral spirit. In example, here is the definition of a neutral spirit with two types for vodka and grain spirits: 27 CFR 5.22(a) Class 1; neutral spirits or alcohol. “Neutral spirits” or “alcohol” are distilled spirits produced from any material at or above 190° proof, and, if bottled, bottled at not less than 80° proof.

(1) Vodka is neutral spirits so distilled, or so treated after distillation with charcoal or other materials, as to be without distinctive character, aroma, taste, or color.
(2) “Grain spirits” are neutral spirits distilled from a fermented mash of grain and stored in oak containers. By this definition, a distilled spirit can be called neutral spirits or alcohol as long as 190° proof is achieved. The source of sugar or starch to produce this neutral spirit is not a factor in the definition. So, to place the term “vodka” on a label of beverage distilled spirits, it must come from a neutral spirit, which was produced at 190° proof or higher.

Further, whisky definitions are listed in 27 CFR 5.22 (b)(1) to (b)(9). These include whisky, straight whisky, bourbon, corn, light, blend, blend of straights, spirit, Scotch, Irish, and Canadian. By definition, if you want to distill and label a whisky as a bourbon, rye, wheat, malt, or rye malt whisky, you must produce a distilled spirit with at least 51 percent of the grain, respectively, that is named on the label. Bourbon is unique in that it must be distilled from a fermented mash of 51 percent corn.

The regulations further state that all whisky spirits must be distilled at not more than 160° proof, and bourbon, wheat, rye, malt, or rye malt whisky must be stored in new charred oak containers at not more than 125° proof. If these whiskies are named as a straight whisky on the label, they must have been stored for at least two years.

The remainder of classes are as follows:

(c) Class 3; gin.
(d) Class 4; brandy.
(e) Class 5; blended applejack.
(f) Class 6; rum.
(g) Class 7; Tequila.
(h) Class 8; cordials and liqueurs.
(i) Class 9; flavored brandy, flavored gin, flavored rum, flavored vodka, and flavored whisky.
(j) Class 10; imitations.
(k) Class 11; geographical designations.
(l) Class 12; products without geographical designations but distinctive of a particular place.

Where Can I Obtain More Information?

The statutory requirements for labeling distilled spirits are in 27 U.S.C. 205(e) and the standards of identity regulations are listed in 27 CFR 5.22. To access the standards of identity regulations on the TTB Web site, please visit the Distilled Spirits page of

www.TTB.gov.

Also, if you need to understand what a gauge is or if you want to identify what required information is necessary to document a bottling record, this information is found in 27 CFR part 19 and is also accessible through TTB.gov.
The Beverage Alcohol Manual is another excellent source of guidance on basic mandatory labeling requirements and other regulatory matters involving distilled spirits. You may contact TTB at any time if you have further questions or concerns.

The Bureau’s Distilled Spirits Industry Analyst is available at dave.bateman@ttb.gov
or by phone at 202-302-3859 and 816-623-9405.
=======================
Back Issues of 2005 Newsletters

Making Pure Corn whiskey other distilling books, equipment, supplies and expertise.
http://www.home-distilling.com/ search.asp
======================

Touring Scottish Whisky Distilleries

The Virtual Absinthe Museum
An extensive reference collection of original artifacts documenting every aspect of the history of La Fee Verte, from its use as a medicinal elixir in ancient times, to its heyday as a fashionable aperitif in the 19th century and its prohibition at the beginning of the 20th.

http://www.ttb.gov/spirits/bam.shtml distilled spirits manual circular.
This is a must for any formula or label approval..
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CVI Brands
1025 Tanklage Road, Unit F
San carlos, CA 94070
65-595-1768
Is interested in new products from microdistillers.
Contact: Paul Joseph
civibrands@sbcglobal.net
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