policy

How quickly times and lines continue to change and move. Just two years ago, these various military-themed labels were considered by many to be tacky. In the absence of much uproar, and with plenty of military activities since then, the march of military-themed alcohol beverages continues apace. Heroes brand vodka claims to be Veteran Owned, all American, four times distilled — and most startling — “Official Spirit of a Grateful Nation.” The brand is owned by Travis McVey, a U.S. Marine from 1989-1992. During the past few years, McVey teamed up with Lipman Brothers and Buffalo Trace (bottler):

In 2009, Heroes LLC came to fruition when Travis contacted Robert S. Lipman – a beverage alcohol industry veteran – with a business plan for introducing a hand-crafted vodka to all of the active duty military and Veterans as well as civilians throughout the United States. He anticipated the vodka being made in America with distribution to over 6,000 military bases, 6,000 VFW posts, and 12,000 American Legions posts. When Travis presented his Heroes Vodka proposal … Lipman was intrigued. The successful entrepreneur,whose family established Lipman Brothers in 1939, has been sitting at the helm of the oldest distributor of wine and spirits in Tennessee for nearly 25 years. Hundreds of pitches pass...

I can find plenty of alcohol beverages made in Romania, for example, from the above lookup at TTB’s website. But I can’t find anything from Saudi Arabia. Oh yes, it’s easy to say that Saudi Arabia is a major, majority-Muslim country and so I should not expect to find a single drop of alcohol beverages flowing out from or in to that country. Wikipedia says no less than 100% of the population is Muslim. On the other hand, Turkey has far more Muslims, at 99% of the population — and no less than 370 label approvals in the TTB database. A recent wine approval is here. Indonesia has more Muslims than any other country and also has about 25 label approvals in the database. Here is Panther Beer. Algeria has at least a few approvals. A wine example is here. Morocco has a few hundred approvals, with a recent wine example here. Egypt has a code, but I don’t see any approvals. Rounding out the top 14 Muslim countries, the following countries (in addition to Saudi Arabia) do not even have a TTB lookup code:  Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sudan. Some of these countries are so strict that not even soy sauce or vanilla extract is tolerated.

It may be safe to put away that gnarly old ruler, from fifth grade. A few days ago, TTB announced that it will ease up on scrutinizing your cpi’s and mm’s. At first this sounds like a good thing, and the “streamlining” as described — because many are the frustrations about waiting on a coveted COLA — only to find it lying in the tatters of rejection, because of a few letters too big or too small. Industry Circular 2011-04 says:

(TTB) will no longer examine labels to determine whether the images included in the applications meet the type size, characters per inch, and contrasting background requirements.  As a result, TTB will no longer return applications for correction due to these issues.  However, TTB reserves the right to review and return applications for these reasons when it deems necessary.

In some ways this may be good, especially if it speeds up the system and makes TTB more efficient. But the main effect may be a shift of this not so trivial burden over to the applicant. There is no change to the various CFR rules requiring all your cpi’s and mm’s to be just right, and this Circular in no way mitigates that burden. In fact, TTB hastens to add:  “The responsible industry member...