Such was the emotional response elicited by the latest press release from St. Augustine Distillery, sharing news of the enactment of HB 347.
Not owing to anything related to St. Augustine themselves, its message is both offensive and presumptuous, obviously to a lesser extent, in the way that it must have been to slaves given their freedom or women accorded the right to vote. As if those restoring these rights, rights inherent yet tyrannically withheld, had anything to give, or any authority to gift it.
Not that we’re not thrilled for micro-distillers and craft spirit enthusiasts in the state of Florida. We are. But we are also incensed at the audacity of a system that purports to be, in this day and age of unadulterated freedom, anything more than protectionist and oppressive.
“This new law allows our customers to buy two bottles, per brand, per year,” explained Philip McDaniel, co-founder and CEO of St. Augustine Distillery in St. Augustine, Fla. and co-founder of Florida Distillers Guild. “That means that someone can buy two bottles of our Florida Cane Vodka, two bottles of our New World Gin and two bottles each of our rum and bourbon when they become available to the public.”
In response to the new law, which took effect on July 1st and purportedly gives Florida spirit makers the ability to sell more of their product directly to consumers, St. Augustine Distillery unveiled new brands for their vodka and gin. This allows them to exploit a small loophole in the law, marketing their spirits under multiple brands that customers can then buy direct. More brands are set to hit the shelves over the next six weeks.
This gift from the Florida legislature means that a customer can now buy two bottles of each of the following products from the St. Augustine Distillery gift shop in one calendar year: Florida Cane Vodka, Pot Distilled Vodka, Ice Plant Edition Vodka, New World Gin, Pot Distilled Gin and Ice Plant Edition Gin.
God forbid you should want three bottles, or if St. Augustine should run out of names. Or at least the Florida legislature does.
What is striking about this arrangement, beyond its duplicitous ridiculity, is the glaring light it shines on our inability to completely discard disrupted social constructs, even those proven to be criminal or downright inhumane. As depicted in AMC’s brutally authentic Hell on Wheels, you can change the name of slave to freedman but the relationship, or at least the operating mindset, remains very much the same. Too often, the comfort of familiar constraints is deemed preferable to the apprehension of uncharted possibility.
By selling direct, craft distillers cut out a century of middlemen and disrupt a system that has, until now, remained relatively unassailable. A veritable maze of regulation, unique to each state, exists to bridle what to most seems a rather straightforward proposition, that of producers selling their wares to people who want it.
By selling direct, craft distillers cut out a century of middlemen and disrupt a system that has, until now, remained relatively unassailable. A veritable maze of regulation, unique to each state, exists to bridle what to most seems a rather straightforward proposition, that of producers selling their wares to people who want it.
The obvious solution, allowing retail sales at distillery locations within the boundaries of any given state, is just too easy, too democratic, too direct. Producers and consumers evidently can’t be trusted with such an important transaction. Why else would Florida deem it necessary to enact legislation that clearly serves no other interests than the ones still struggling to maintain their tenuous grasp on a defunct status quo?
