For a good, edifying time, grab a bottle of craft spirits, a beach — and this book.

The book is Moonshiner to Craft Distillery: Leading Lawyers on the Business of Distilling. Aspatore Books, a division of Thomson Reuters, published the book a few weeks ago. In this book, I am pleased to be in the good company of Ryan Malkin, Gloria Materre, Alva Mather, and other notable lawyers in the alcohol beverage law field.

Here are a few excerpts from my chapter, entitled “Reflections on Thirty Years of Spirits Law Practice:  From a Few Score to a Few Thousand Distilleries.”

Almost thirty years ago I got lucky and happened upon the hitherto unknown field (unknown at least to me) now known as beverage law. The years have passed quickly, and this is a testament to how challenging and interesting this field can be. Things have moved a long way during that time, from shuffling paper forms, digging through millions of words in black binders, and a country with a few dozen large distilleries. The law has not changed a lot, but the related law practice has changed dramatically, and so has the business climate.

This area of the law is more heavily regulated than any other aspect of consumer products...

The main Tito’s Handmade Vodka case has been dismissed, after 19 months of heated litigation. Details are not available so far.

The main case was Hofmann v. Fifth Dimension, Inc. (first filed in state court in September of 2014 then removed to federal court in San Diego a month later). A second and similar case, Cabrera v. Fifth Generation, Inc., also got dismissed on the same day.

On April 22, 2016, both sides in both cases filed joint motions to dismiss. On May 3, Judge Miller of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California issued an order in each case, granting the parties’ joint motions.

At one point there were at least eight class action lawsuits against Tito’s Vodka, scattered around the U.S., challenging the very prominent references to “Handmade,” on the product’s labeling and advertising. There are no signs of any label changes, and Google says this has not been in the press to date.

Just when it seemed like TTB labels and formulas would be slow, and get slower every year — all of a sudden things look pretty fast. The above table shows that normal formulas take two weeks or less. It’s been a really long time since the processing times have been less than a month. This is a huge benefit for producers everywhere. Over on the label side, things are also getting better. This scary looking table shows that beer, wine and spirits labels were flirting with 40 and more days of processing time, toward late 2014, until the trends started to improve (things got particularly ugly here).

As of today, TTB says the processing time for labels is right around 21 days.

I reached out to TTB to see why things seem so much better. TTB said:

Although workloads have continued to increase since FY 2015, we have recently been able to improve our processing times in part through cross-training and because new staff hired last year are reaching full proficiency.  However, the improvements you are seeing right now are also due in large part to increased use of overtime and the temporary reassignment of staff from other mission areas, which are short term fixes until we are able...

Last week, a federal court dismissed a putative class-action lawsuit against Diageo, holding that Red Stripe’s labeling and packaging does not, as a matter of law, mislead reasonable consumers into thinking that Red Stripe is made in Jamaica with Jamaican ingredients.

The suit, Dumas et al. v. Diageo PLC et al., began in July 2015, when class-action Plaintiffs alleged that Diageo deceived consumers into believing that Red Stripe is manufactured in Jamaica. Plaintiffs argued that Diageo’s use of the phrases “Jamaican Style Lager” and “The Taste of Jamaica,” incorporation of the Desnoes & Geddes logo, and allusions to the “spirit, rhythm, and pulse of Jamaica,” misled consumers to believe that Red Stripe was a Jamaican Beer.

Chief Judge Barry T. Moskowitz of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California issued the opinion, disagreeing with Plaintiffs, and holding that “no reasonable consumer would be misled into thinking that Red Stripe is made in Jamaica with Jamaican ingredients based on the wording of the packaging and labeling.”

Key to Judge Moskowitz’s decision was the fact that Red Stripe says “Jamaican Style Lager” and “Brewed & Bottled by Red Stripe Beer Company, Latrobe, PA.” Judge Moskowitz concluded that the word “Jamaican” modifies the word “Style” (not “Lager”), and indicates that the product is...