What started as a routine wrangling over legal minutiae has become what may be a new tradition for a Nelson County brewery.
Blue Mountain Barrel House, a new sister brewery to Nelson’s well-established Blue Mountain Brewery, had its fans and patrons take to Facebook recently to rename and relabel two of the establishment’s first brews.
The beers are two different versions of a porter — a dark, malty brew — infused with cocoa nibs fruit and aged in old bourbon barrels.
The original labels called one of the beers a Chocolate Orange Bourbon Porter and the other a Chocolate Cherry Bourbon Porter.
The Chocolate Orange Bourbon Porter will now be called Isabel, named for a Brazilian princess. According to the fan who suggested the name, Brazil is one of the world’s leading producers of cacao, and Isabel is a member of the House of Bourbon.
“I was blown away when I saw [the name],” Blue Mountain master brewer Taylor Smack said. “Isabel is a princess of Brazil, which is a leading producer of oranges and cacao, and she’s a member of the House of Bourbon … Which I thought was hilarious, ’cause why do you even know that?”
The contest proved a success, and may turn into the new business’s response when one of its beer labels is rejected by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, or TTB. Such rejections aren’t rare, Smack said, but he found the most recent two particularly gratuitous.
“We’ve had every label rejected, but what made this different was that the other rejections we get, I honestly feel like they’re stupid, but they’re so letter of the law, it’s just like, whatever,” Smack said. “But this one I felt was just really foolish.”
Every beer label in the U.S. is reviewed by TTB agent Battle Martin, Smack said.
Robert Lehrman, a Northern Virginia lawyer who runs Lehrman Beverage Law, said Martin has a strict set of guidelines to follow, including dictionary-style books and a document called the Beverage Alcohol Manual, which helps the government classify drinks for tax purposes.
“It’s pretty rare that [Martin] has said something outlandish,” Lehrman said. “He’s not doing alcohol broadly, he just does beer ... He’s probably crossed a lot of these bridges in the past, a lot of it is fairly decided.”
The manual classifies a porter as: “Malt beverage fermented at a comparatively high temperature containing 0.5 percent or more alcohol by volume possessing the characteristics generally attributed to and conforming to the trade understanding of ‘porter.’”
That classification, Lehrman said, is nearly useless.
“That’s a bunch of gobbeldy-gook; it doesn’t say anything,” Lehrman said. “It says porter is what people think porter is.”
Because the BAM classification is ambiguous, Lehrman said, Martin likely uses a dictionary-type book to distinguish beers.
According to Smack, Martin told him the classification of the two beers had to go because the labels would mislead consumers into thinking they were getting a traditional porter.
Smack said that’s nitpicking.
The original label has the words “chocolate,” “orange,” “bourbon” and “porter” in large print. That, Smack said, should be enough of a tip-off that the beer isn’t going to taste like a regular porter.
“According to [Martin], the misleading information was the word ‘porter’ in the banner,” Smack said. “The consumer is not going to see the ‘chocolate orange’ above ‘porter.’ They’re going to get it and be disappointed.”
Smack said he understands Martin just has a job to do, but questioned the sense of having laws that govern beer label minutiae.
“We are talking about stupid laws, that protect no one and are an absolute freaking waste of tax dollars,” Smack said.
Because the beer labels needed to be reworked, Smack said, the timeline for releasing the beers themselves needed to be pushed back about a week. That delay will end up costing money, but Smack said he wasn’t sure of the total yet.
“We have a huge loan that we’re paying interest on, so there’s another week that we can’t brew,” he said.
Now, Smack said, the beers will need to be classified as “robust porter” to avoid the association with typical porter. Though that classification will pacify the TTB, Smack said, beer aficionados may be less enthusiastic.
“In brewer’s terminology, it isn’t a robust porter ... I guess you could say I’m being told to call it something it’s not,” Smack said, adding that most people won’t notice the difference.
“Nobody knows except at the severe geek level,” he said.
The legal bottom line for alcohol labels, Lehrman said, is keeping everything on a standard.
“It’s all about classifying things, for tax purposes, maybe for duty purposes, they need to level the playing field,” he said.
For Smack, it means a continued annoyance, but also an opportunity to connect with customers.
“I would say our Facebook naming contest days are just beginning,” he said. “We made lemonade out of lemons, I guess.”
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