With only two days to go until the second Presidential Debate, Trump and Clinton are clearly on everyone’s mind. Including the beer and wine companies shown above.

The Trump-inspired Blonde Ale label is from 5 Rabbit Cerveceria of Bedford Park, Illinois. It leaves no doubt they are not Trump fans. It says: “STOP THE HATE,” “CHINGA TU PELO” (look it up), “We decided to take a stand against racism,” “BULLIES AREN’T LEADERS.” Frank would love to have a can of this in time for the big event.

The Clinton-inspired Chardonnay label is from Scotto Family Cellars of Lodi, California. They have a couple types, and six approvals. We did not find any Trump-related labels at this company. Perhaps it would infringe on this.

Both seem to be real products and TTB apparently approves of both messages.

TTB put out Ruling 2016-3 at the end of September. It relates to spirits formula approvals, and is intended to cut some of the burdens for spirits companies and for TTB. It’s also sort of long. Word says it is 3,573 (carefully chosen) words. My mission is to break it down to 15% or less.

The gist is, TTB will help you avoid formula approval for many products in these big categories: vodka, rum, whisky, brandy. Some details, on each category, are below. If you want the whole story, you can go to the Ruling, and the elaborations at Industry Circular 2016-1 (for imports) and Guidance 2016-3. Rather than knocking out the formula approval requirements in the spirits regulations, TTB explains: “TTB will not accept for review new formulas submitted for products approved under this ruling. This ruling serves as the approval that is required by §§ 5.26, 5.27, and 19.348.”

1. Vodka. The Ruling takes advantage of the fact that vodka already has a narrow standard of identity and explains that if you are clearly within it, the Ruling should be used instead of submitting a formula. Only a bit of sugar and citric acid allowed.
2. Rum. The standard is not quite so narrow, as compared to vodka, but it’s...

After a full day wrangling booze labels, I heard a good story about bacon labeling on the way home from work (bringing home the bacon, as it were). The radio story emanated from a Bloomberg web story, “Why Supermarket Bacon Hides Its Glorious Fat.” The story touches upon the intersection of our love-hate relationship with fat and with government, and also upon labeling issues and wily businesspeople. Explaining that bacon has “one of the most unusual and underappreciated packaging formats of any supermarket product” it says:

The standard one-pound package shows the bacon slices fanned out, with only their leading edges exposed. The industry term for this is a shingle pack—a reference to the way the slices overlap. Because those front edges tend to feature more lean muscle than the fattier back edges, and because the face of the top slice is invariably covered by a paperboard flap containing the manufacturer’s logo and other branding information, the consumer sees a relatively unbroken field of red protein, creating the illusion that the bacon is leaner than it is.

Lest the bacon packaging hide the fat too much, the U.S. government requires the packaging to show the real story, at least on the back window. The window allows the consumer:

to see how the bacon...

TTB’s website at www.ttb.gov can be pretty helpful. Here are a few of the pages we check most often.

1. TTB Newsletter. This comes out about once a week and can be very useful. For example, the August 19, 2016 edition provided background information about Tom Crone – with 53 years of federal service!
2. Formula Tool. Don’t guess about whether you need a formula approval. If you guess, you are likely to be wrong because it’s not always intuitive. For example, why does all sake need a formula approval (and lab analysis) – when other fermented rice beverages (such as beer) don’t? If you make this mistake, it can be time-consuming and costly. With this tool, you can check most any class/type, and get a better view of what needs a TTB formula approval, and what does not.
3. FAQs. TTB here answer dozens of common questions. One example is, what is “pear cider”?
4. Public COLA Registry. This is a good place to look up all or almost all recent COLAs. At this point it goes back 20 years or more. We say almost because it does not cover wine coolers, kombucha – or other products that happen to be alcohol beverages, but don’t fall within TTB’s labeling jurisdiction. Last time we checked,...