New TTB Rule Provides More Flexibility and Clarity
The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) published a final rule on April 2 seeking to modernize labeling and advertising regulations for wine, distilled spirits, and malt beverages (27 CFR Parts 4, 5, 7, and 19), which will take effect on May 4, 2020. The rule generally is favorable because it does not require any changes to current labels or advertisements, and it provides more flexibility and clarity for some existing requirements.
Below is a summary of the changes that the TTB either did or did not choose to adopt from its 2018 proposal. The TTB plans to analyze further and to address additional issues at a later date. While the majority of the changes affect distilled spirits, a few changes relate to malt beverages and wine as well.
Key Changes
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Removes prohibitions against the use of the term “strong” and other indications of alcohol strength on malt beverage labels.
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Increases the tolerance applicable to the alcohol content statements on distilled spirits labels to plus or minus 0.3 percentage points.
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Removes the current prohibition against age statements on several classes and types of distilled spirits.
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Removes a limitation on the way that distilled spirits producers may count the distillations when making optional “multiple distillation” claims on their labels.
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Amends the standard of identity for vodka.
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Adds a process for importers and bottlers to make certain changes to approved labels in order to personalize labels without having to resubmit the labels for TTB approval.
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Creates an “Agave Spirits” class, of which tequila and mezcal will be a part, that will allow the industry greater flexibility in labeling products that are distilled from agave.
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Revises regulations on the placement of mandatory information on distilled spirits containers. The revised rules will allow mandatory information to appear anywhere on the labels, as long as it is within the same field of vision (e.g., a single side of a container).
Proposals Not Adopted
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Proposed restrictions on use of the word “draft” or “draught” on malt beverages.
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A definition of an “oak barrel” for purposes of aging distilled spirits.
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A proposed restriction on the use of certain types of cross-commodity terms (e.g., imposing restrictions on the use of various types of distilled spirits terms, including homophones of distilled spirits classes on wine or malt beverage labels).
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Proposed changes to statements of composition for distilled spirits labels, including changes that would have required disclosure of components of intermediate products, required distilled spirits and wines used in a finished product to be listed in order of predominance, and removed the flexibility to use an abbreviated statement of composition for cocktails.
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A policy that would have limited “age” statements on distilled spirits labels to include only the time that the product is aged in the first barrel, and not aging that occurs in subsequent barrels.
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A proposal that would have required that whisky that meets the standards for a specific type designation be labeled with that type designation.
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A proposal to incorporate in TTB’s regulations the jurisdictional interaction between Food and Drug Administration determinations that a product is “adulterated” and TTB’s position that such a product is “mislabeled.”