It can take upwards of 150 days for TTB to process and approve your distillery application. To avoid adding several days or weeks to your processing time, check your application to see if you made any of the following mistakes:
- Tasting Rooms / Retail Areas on Bonded Premises. TTB does not permit the retail sales of alcohol on distillery premises. If you want to have a tasting room or retail areas at your distillery, those areas must have complete physical separation from the bonded and general premises.
- Ensure diagrams/floor plans include exterior dimensions of the plant and interior dimensions of walls.
- Complete an Owner/Officer Information Application (personnel questionnaire) for all officers, directors, members and partners, and shareholders/investors owning 10% or more of the company. You should provide a separate list of all shareholders/investors with their names, addresses and percent ownership of the company even if they own less than 10%.
- No Permission from Landlord to Operate. Your lease must show that the landlord is aware of (and consents to) distilled spirits operations on the premises (e.g. distilling, blending, bottling, warehousing).
- Inconsistent Names and Addresses. Ensure your entity’s name and address is consistent throughout the application and matches your corporate documentation. For example, if your bond is missing something as small as a comma from your entity name (“Generic Distillers, LLC” versus “Generic Distillers LLC”), you will have to correct or redo your bond.
- Signing Authority. If your corporate documents do not clearly give a certain owner/officer the authority to sign on behalf of your brewery, then you should complete and attach TTB’s Signing Authority form. Download here
For more information about this topic, contact John Messinger.
