Legal Aspects of Home Winemaking

The legality of making your own wine at home came up in conversation this week. Seeing as it's part of my profession to know (or research) answers to questions about the law I thought I'd do a quick survey of the legality and limitations on making wine at home. Turns out the production of wine is regulated by state and federal law. Prior to 1979 the federal government required a permit for producing wine for personal consumption. Kind of onerous for helping some grape juice and yeast through their biological cycles. Thankfully these requirements were dropped for quantities less that 100 gallons for a single person and 200 gallons for a household of two or more adults per year. 27 C.F.R. § 24.75 (2006). So here's to legally not paying taxes on what we produce!

So if the same three households go in on the project next year we could always up the amount to 600 gallons. Or enough wine for each household to have over two bottles of wine a day, for a year. They may be little of overkill, but it also leaves you with plenty of wine to lay away.