Wine industry wants separate liquor license | Kentucky Politics

FRANKFORT? Dan Bryan wanted to open a wine bar but the cost shocked him.

Just to get a liquor license could cost more than $25,000. That?s why Bryan and local leaders support a bill introduced by State Rep. Dennis Keene, D-Newport, that would create a separate liquor license to sell wine by the drink in wine bars.

Winemakers hope this will lead to more bars devoted to wine that will promote the state?s growing wine industry, which has grown in the past 15 years from four wineries to 65 across the state.

Bryan, who has grown grapes in his southern Campbell County vineyard for seven years, wanted a chance to sell local wines alongside international wines.

?It is a place to come in and socialize and taste the quality of Kentucky wines have to offer and compare it to wines around the world,? Bryan said. ?I see the interest and the positive response we get to the Kentucky wine product. We wanted to find a venue or an avenue that would help supply the industry.?

But when he tried to open a wine bar in the Nevada building in Fort Thomas, he found a liquor license hard to come by. The state limits on liquor-by-the-drink licenses meant he would have to buy a liquor license from someone who already held one. That could cost as much as $40,000 depending on the market, said Debbie Buckley, Fort Thomas renaissance manager.

State law limits each liquor-by-the-drink licenses according to population. Campbell County where Fort Thomas is located has a limit of 36, but because many predate the quota system, Campbell County has 82 active liquor drink licenses, statistics from the Kentucky Department of Alcohol Beverage Control show. Kenton County has 94 active liquor drink licenses, 31 more than its quota of 63. Boone County is under its quota of 47 licenses with 26 active. Owners of the licenses can sell them on the open market, but laws prevent brokers from collecting them and require a physical building connected with the license.

Bryan?s wine bar had space picked out in the 120-year-old Nevada Building in Fort Thomas? Midway District, Buckley said.

?We had all the components perfectly in place until we discovered that Campbell County had no license available,? Buckley said. ?We were considered the wettest county in the state because we oversold our licenses by 80. You could open a bar as long as you sold food but you could not open a bar here without the food because we oversold them. There were no available licenses.?

Buckley approached Keene who introduced the bill that would provide a separate license for wine bars not limited by the state quotas for liquor drink and package licenses. The bill would limit wine bars to central business districts or in historic buildings. The bill would also include a local option for Sunday liquor sales in areas where that?s illegal. While Northern Kentucky has liquor sales, wineries around the state have pushed for this since only 26 of the state?s 65 wineries can sell their products on Sundays.

Keene said he doesn?t expect the bill will pass this year but hopes it can next year. Alcohol bills can cause division among legislators due to the moral arguments, Keene said. By restricting it to historic buildings and downtown areas, Keene hopes the bill will get more support.

?We didn?t want them showing up at shopping centers,? Keene said.

The Kentucky wine industry hope a separate wine license and Sunday liquor sales will boost the Kentucky wine industry. Kentucky has climbed the ranks in the United States wine market. While Kentucky ranks 12th overall in amount of wine produced, it has the fifth most wine in bulk storage waiting to be bottled, according to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau in the U.S. Treasury Department. Winemakers say Kentucky may regain the reputation for wine it enjoyed in the 19th Centry when, in 1860, Kentucky ranked third in grape production, according to the Kentucky Vineyard Society.

Kentucky wines now regularly beat California wines in competition, said Bill Wehrman, owner of Seven Wells Vineyard in California, Ky.

?People come in from California, people who know their wines, and we have a lot of them telling us how good our wines are,? Wehrman said.

About 500-1,000 people a month come to Dennis Walter?s StoneBrook Winery in Melbourne, Ky. The Backroads Kentucky Wine Trail of five Northern Kentucky wineries has brought more people to the local wineries since it started in Nov. 2010, Walter said. Kentucky wines, including StoneBrook, have garnered medals in international competitions. ?We?ve produced believers that Kentucky can make a good wine,? Walter said.

Tourism for wine in Kentucky could double in the next five years if the state supports it, said Allen Dossey, vice president of the Kentucky Vineyard Society. Dossey, who works as the president of an insurance company, started Purple Toad Winery in Paducah two years ago and now bottles 55,000 bottles a year.

?It will help the wineries with people out tasting their wines in wine bars,? Dossey said. ?It helps the farmer and helps the local businesses. There?s a big trickle down. The more revenue they sell, the more tax revenue the state will get.?

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Source: http://cincinnati.com/blogs/nkypolitics/2012/03/03/wine-industry-wants-separate-liquor-license/

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