The Legality of Homemade Wine
In 1979, the government made it legal for people to make their own wine or beer. Here is the law in a nutshell:
- You may legally make 100 gallons per calendar year if you are single and over 18, or 200 gallons if there are two or more adults in your household.
- You may not sell your wine or offer your wine for sale.
- You can take the wine out of your home for personal or family use, contests, exhibitions, wine judgings, etc.
- If you make more than the alloted amount, you are expected to pay taxes on the wine.
If you don’t think 100 gallons is a lot of wine, do the math. I get 5 bottles to the gallon, so we’re talking about 500 bottles a year for an individual, 1000 bottles for a couple. That’s an awful lot of wine. It would take sixteen 6-gallon kits to make 96 gallons of wine.
In 2001, my most active winemaking year, I made 11 different batches of wine for a total of 82 gallons. Much of that wine is long gone, but I still have some of that wine aging on my shelves (Blackberry, Blueberry, Cranberry, French Merlot, & Pinot Noir) .
One hundred gallons is a lot of wine, a lot of corks, and a lot of bottles.
