Instead of a star or angel, Lakeridge Winery & Vineyards in Clermont, just west of Orlando, tops its annual Christmas tree with a 6-liter empty wine bottle nearly 2 feet tall.
Selling wine in a bottle that size has been illegal in Florida since 1939, with a state statute limiting wine sales to containers a little less than 3 liters in quantity. The only exceptions: Wine sold in 5.16-gallon reusable containers or from one wine distributor to another.
A new law taking effect July 1, however, will allow Florida wine stores to use 6-liter bottles for more than holiday decor.
Each year since 2018, the state House of Representatives has tried to pass a bill revoking the wine size limitation. In March, with a measure finally earning adoption by the Florida Senate, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law.
It permits retailers to sell wine in glass bottles of five different sizes, each with its own nickname corresponding with a biblical king. They start at the 4.5-liter Rehoboam, followed by the 6-liter Methuselah, the 9-liter Salmanazar, the 12-liter Balthazar and the 15-liter Nebuchadnezzar.
The Nebuchadnezzar – affectionately known as the “Neb” by those in the wine business – weighs 83 pounds and holds the same amount as 20 standard wine bottles.
“It goes up nearly past my waist, if it’s sitting on the ground,” said Christian Slupe, the third generation operator at the Lakeridge winery, which has sent seven lobbyists to Tallahassee to support the bottle size increase in the last three years.
Lakeridge has multiple empty large-format bottles displayed in its tasting rooms, including the one that tops its tree every December. Visitors have asked for years about buying large bottles after seeing them around the vineyard, Slupe said.
Slupe is eager to send big bottles home with customers, pop them open during VIP tours and use them during special events, he said. He’s already buying a new corker, finding companies that make big bottles and printing extra-large labels.
“They’re super eye-catching,” he said. “It will obviously get a larger label on it, based on the size of the label, and the bigger, the better, the more recognition we get.”
State Rep. Chip LaMarca, a Republican whose district includes part of Broward County, introduced the wine bottle increase bill every year since 2019. He received a total of $1,500 in campaign donations from Lakeridge’s parent company, Seavin, the last three election cycles.
When local wine merchants first brought the matter to his attention, LaMarca thought it seemed an easy one to fix, he said. The bill stalled every year in the Senate, however, due to lobbying from Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, the world’s largest alcoholic beverage distributor.
“Their concern was other products that might come out – different things like plastic, plastic bags, bladders, boxes, other ways to sell wine in containers,” LaMarca said. “They just wanted to make sure that we all knew what we were getting into.”
This year, he sat down with the dissenting distributor to reach a compromise. The resulting law states large-format wines can only be sold in glass bottles – and only in the five specific sizes.
Mel Dick, president of the Southern Glazer’s wine division, said he supports the final outcome and looks forward to giving Florida customers more options.
“It’s a new opportunity, and people seem excited about it,” Dick said.
DeSantis praised LaMarca’s perseverance during a bill-signing event hosted by the boutique Wine Watch in Fort Lauderdale in March. The governor also autographed big bottles and sipped a ‘98 vintage Cristom Jessie Vineyard to mark the occasion.
“This is an example of us cutting unnecessary red tape and eliminating out-of-state regulations,” DeSantis said. “We want our consumers to be happy, and if that means they want to buy and sell a big old bottle of wine like this, then by golly, they’re going to be able to do that.”
State Sen. Clay Yarborough, a Republican from Jacksonville, cast the only dissenting vote against the bill, even though he didn’t have an issue with it specifically. He votes against all bills related to alcohol expansion. Yarborough said he’s done so since his time in local government, when he saw the adverse effects of a growing alcohol industry on local communities. That included, he said, hard liquor stores coming into older shopping centers near schools.
“Consistency is what drives my vote,” Yarborough said.
Although not officially legal, big-bottle wines have been sold in Miami for years, said Matthieu Yamoum, co-owner of Maison Mura Wine, a wine bar in that city.
While big distributors have refused to take the risk of selling large bottles, Yamoum has always been able to buy them from smaller distributors, he said.
“A lot of people are like, ‘But you should not be able to get that,’” Yamoum said. “So maybe the smaller distributors were taking a risk … but even if there was a small distributor, he bought it from a bigger importer somewhere in the U.S., so it’s very unclear.”
Miami will be No. 1 in the state for big bottle sales because people there “love to show off,” Yamoum said. Every time he stocks a 6-liter bottle, it sells quickly, often to a customer planning to bring it to a party, he said.
“When I see them again, they’re like, ‘Woah, you made me look so good, everybody was so excited about my bottle,’” he said. “They sometimes don’t really care what’s in the bottle. It’s like, they want to take a picture with the big bottle.”
But Tim Varan, owner of Tim’s Wine Market in Orlando, doesn’t share the same big-bottle boom optimism.
“I have a couple customers who like 6 liters, so it’ll be nice to be able to get those for them for a change,” Varan said. “But in terms of how much business this is going to add? Nothing.”
He considers the law “much ado about nothing” compared to other, more damaging Florida wine regulations — like the state allowing distributors to ship out-of-state wine directly to consumers, which hurts in-state retailers, he said.
Florida is one of three states that allow out-of-state wineries to ship directly to consumers without requiring a winery to hold a permit, according to the Wine Institute. The state ranks 12th in the country for wine consumed per capita, and second for wine consumption overall, based on 2021 data from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
Kyle Ruddington agrees that Central Florida will not see a boom in 80-plus-pound bottles. A former New Yorker, Ruddington opened Modest Wine in Winter Park three years ago with his wife. Big bottles may look “cool,” but they also pose some logistical problems, he said.
“When wines are that big, you have to siphon it out like they did with gasoline in the ‘70s,” he said. “Like, you need to put a plastic tube in and suck it out until the wine comes out, and then you can pour it into glasses. It’s not the sexiest thing.”
The last time Ruddington stocked a 3-liter, or Jeroboam, champagne bottle, it stayed on the shelf for five or six months before selling. But he plans to have a few larger bottles after July 1, for customers searching for what he called a “big battleship.”
Kevin Decker, who buys wine for The Wine Room in Winter Park, said the bigger bottles have a flavor advantage over smaller ones. “With bigger bottles, you have more wine to the cork’s surface area,” Decker said. “So, they’ll age a little slower.”
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