Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau April 2020 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) is amending certain of its regulations governing the labeling and advertising of wine, distilled spirits, and malt beverages to address comments it received in response to a notice of proposed rulemaking, Notice No. 176, published on November 26, 2018. In this document, TTB is finalizing certain liberalizing and clarifying changes that were proposed, and that could be implemented quickly and provide industry members greater flexibility. TTB is also identifying certain other proposals that will not be adopted, including the proposal to define an ``oak barrel'' for purposes of aging distilled spirits, the proposal to require that statements of composition for distilled spirits specialty products list components in ``intermediate'' products and list distilled spirits and wines used in distilled spirits specialty products in order of predominance, and the proposal to adopt new policies on the use of cross-commodity terms. TTB continues to consider the remaining issues raised by comments it received that are not addressed in this document. TTB plans to address those issues in subsequent rulemaking documents. The regulatory amendments in this document will not require industry members to make changes to alcohol beverage labels or advertisements and instead will afford them additional flexibility to make certain changes if they wish.