Denverpost.com/.- A new law allowing Colorado vintners to package wine other than their own could spur even swifter growth in the state’s blossoming wine industry.
Gov. John Hickenlooper on Friday will sign a law that streamlines state regulations allowing winemakers to bottle, can or keg wines from other wineries. The new law aligns with federal rules that allow bulk shipment of wine for local packaging and distribution.
The new packaging law will eliminate the need for shipping bottles or kegs of wine across the country — or the Atlantic — and will create new jobs at winery kegging, canning and bottling facilities.
The law passed unanimously through seven Senate and House committees before harvesting nothing but yes votes in both chambers.
“Once my colleagues understood how this will help small business, they agreed on its passage,” said Rep. Angela Williams, the Denver Democrat who sponsored House Bill 1034. “(The bill) will help generate more jobs in small businesses in Colorado.”
The law will nourish the state’s nascent but thriving keg wine business. The regulatory change was spurred by Ben Parsons, whose Infinite Monkey Theorem winery in Denver’s River North neighborhood was deluged with requests from other wineries to use his expensive canning and kegging system.
State law prohibited him from packaging another winery’s product without a complicated legal process involving label changes, tax payments and reams of paperwork.
“It was just a missed opportunity for the industry,” Parsons said. “We are leaders in the craft-beer industry, and craft distilling is blowing up. This just reinforces Colorado’s progressive position in the market. We are trying to be creative and keep us on the forefront with cutting-edge new techniques.”
Parsons’ 30,000-square-foot urban winery is recasting wine’s consumer image with accessible cans and glasses-on-tap. He’s also a champion of the urban-winery movement that saw the output of Front Range wineries eclipse that of the state’s Grand Valley wine country in the 2012-13 season.
The new law will allow wineries with advanced bottling, canning and kegging systems to run their packaging systems full time, instead of only when their own product is ready.
“The real advantage is that our small wineries who can’t afford a bottling line or can’t get into kegging can get access to better equipment and grow their opportunities,” Colorado Wine Industry Development Board executive director Doug Caskey said.
The benefit trickles down to distributors, bars, restaurants and wine drinkers. Kegged wine is exploding, with more wineries shipping kegs to wholesalers, restaurants and bars.
“The keg wine business is a game changer,” said Jim Smith, whose Republic National Distributing Company in Littleton delivered 220 kegs of wine between May 2012 and May 2013. So far this year, he has distributed more than 1,000 kegs of wine.
High-profile restaurants, including The Kitchen, Linger, Root Down, Lou’s Food Bar, Punch Bowl and The Broadmoor’s tony new Ristorante del Lago, offer kegged wine.
Most of those wine kegs, Smith said, come from New York and California — states that allow vintners to package and ship other wineries’ wines.
“This puts us in a good competitive position. We have become the Napa Valley of craft brewing and we are fast becoming the Kentucky of craft distilling,” Smith said. “With this whole kegging thing, we can put Colorado on the map yet again.” The law will reduce the cost and environmental impact of shipping, saving wine-drinker dollars while cutting emissions and trimming carbon footprints.
Instead of, say, an Italian winery shipping cases of bottles to Colorado, it can ship a 275-gallon bladder of wine. A California winery can send a bladder instead of pallets of kegs that have to be shipped back empty. A Colorado winery can now keg or bottle the bulk wine, and deliver that to a distributor or restaurant.
“It’s a way more environmentally sound, cost-effective way of doing it,” Parsons said.
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374, jblevins@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jasontblevins
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