NC distilleries are treated differently than breweries. That needs to change.

Like that third highball the veteran bartender serves up to a rowdy bar patron, the N.C. House’s “ABC Omnibus” bill has been watered down.

Let’s put it this way: If House Bill 890 was a shot of Jack, Senate Bill 453 is a Zima.

The Senate’s alternate, undeniably weaker version to House Bill 890 would, among other things, allow ABC customers to order their spirits online and go pick them up. It would also allow liquor producers to feature a restaurant’s label on bottles of booze for marketing purposes.

Yay?

What it doesn’t do, though, is allow the state’s scores of distilleries to operate under the same rules and schedule as bars, wineries and breweries. Those businesses can fully operate on Sundays, while distilleries can only sell bottles of its liquor during the same hours of operation as the state’s ABC stores – Monday through Saturday.

Distillery owners contend, correctly, that they’re put at a competitive disadvantage by being denied access to the beaucoup booze bucks to be made at special events such as “conventions, shopping malls, street festivals, holiday festivals, farmers markets and balloon races.” House Bill 890 sought to eliminate that disadvantage.

Adding the option of craft liquor and cocktails to those weekend activities will certainly make the state more attractive to said festivals, conventions and tourists.

Pete Barger, president of the Distillers Association of N.C. and owner of the Southern Distilling Co. in Statesville, told me the 90-plus members of his association “are not asking for any more than the wineries and breweries get, but we don’t want any less, either. Give us the same treatment. All of us are producing alcohol; we should enjoy the same access to customers that they do.”

The main thing DANC members want, Barger said, is for the distilleries to be able to sell bottles of their booze to customers who visit for tours and tastings on Sunday. “People go to ABC stores for a transaction.” he said. “They come to distilleries for an experience.”

Opponents of the House Bill, such as the Rev. Mark Creech of the conservative Christian Action League, wouldn’t be averse to canceling both the transaction and the experience. The Rev. Creech cites, among other things, a reported increase in alcohol consumption during the pandemic as a reason to oppose changing the law.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information does, indeed, report that “emerging but limited evidence suggests that alcohol consumption has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

That is troubling, sure, but it is something to be addressed by society – and, yes, the alcohol industry - as a whole, not just one segment.

Sorry, guys, but North Carolina is no longer a sleepy berg where everyone is content to spend their Sunday afternoons rocking on the front porch, playing a stimulating game of dominoes while eating Aunt Bee’s homemade peach ice cream. Much of the state has become more cosmopolitan, and its adult residents and tourists want more options for how to spend their Sunday afternoons.

Growing up in Rockingham in the 1960s and 1970s, an exciting Sunday for my buddies and me often consisted of walking down to the Dairy Queen and trying not to get hit by cars while crossing Highway 74 to get a soft cone.

Those wanting a different sort of excitement should be able to get it.

Too many elected officials seem unwilling to accept that adults can be trusted to know how they want to recreate.

“They are,” Barger insisted, “hobbling economic growth via jobs and tourism” by denying distilleries – most of which are located in rural areas that need economic stimulus - the same options as wineries, bars and breweries.

Whether the distilleries are the magical elixir Barger claims – he says that for every one employee of his distillery, five other jobs are created – the distilleries deserve to be treated the same as their closest competitors.

This story was originally published May 20, 2021 at 9:56 AM.