Many state legislatures are getting into gear for the 2016 legislative session and regulatory reform around the alcohol manufacturing industry is sure to be a hot issue for many states in 2016. Two bills have already popped up in Southeastern states, namely Alabama and Georgia.

The Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Study Commission is going to recommend legislation to the Alabama state legislature that would ease regulations on breweries, brewpubs, wineries, and distilleries to allow greater retail sale opportunities.

The Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Commission recommendations include the following:

• Small brewers and brewpubs that produce less than 60,000 barrels of beer per year would be able to sell up to 288 ounces per consumer per day, in any packaging including bottles, cans or growlers.
• Brewpubs would no longer have to be located in a historic building or economically distressed area.
• Brewers could directly deliver beer to charity functions, up to two kegs per event.
• Alabama wineries would be able to sell wines at one ABC-board approved location.
• Alabama distilleries would be able to directly sell consumers up to one 750-milliliter bottle of their spirits per person per year, only for off-premise consumption.

In Georgia, Representative Ron Stephens will soon file a bill, which would allow breweries to do the following:

• Offer direct sales at breweries as well as retail to-go sales.
• Allow breweries to operate a restaurant or sell food at tasting rooms.
• Allow breweries to operate up to five 5 additional tasting rooms in the state.
• Self-distribute up to 5,000 barrels per year.
• Leave a distributor and sign with another, providing certain conditions are met.

Currently 48 states permit some form of onsite retail sales, Georgia and Mississippi being the lone two states that do not allow such. About 75% of states permit some form of self-distribution, another trend that has started to pick up momentum over the last few years. It will be interesting to watch how these initiatives move through the legislative process.