Today was a big day for New Mexico beer, and Christopher Goblet celebrated with a bottle of champagne – the first ever sold in a Land of Enchantment brewery.
Goblet, executive director of the New Mexico Brewers Guild (NMBG), had good cause to celebrate, as his group’s “Frontier of Beer” is expanding in a big way as of today.
If you’re unfamiliar, the NMBG are the folks behind Las Cruces’ annual Blazin’ Brewfest and Dia de la Cerveza beer festivals, which bring brews from around the Land of Enchantment down to the Mesilla Valley, many of which are unavailable outside of their respective breweries and taproom, as well as similar festivals statewide.
So why the celebration? On Wednesday, July 1, a package of five laws advocated for by the guild during the 2015 legislative session went into effect
Those laws – House Bill 243, which held three different initiatives, along with Senate Bills 440 and 238, if you’re a nerd – will change the face of beer, and beyond, in New Mexico.
HB 243 has three distinct components. The first adds the word “growler” – refillable 32- and 64-ounce bottles for draft beer – to the legal nomenclature governing the sale of alcohol in the state, placing it alongside familiar units – can, bottle, pint, keg, etc. – where it before existed in what Goblet termed a legal “no man’s land.”
The second facet of HB 243 allows the state’s larger and better-established breweries to lend or rent precious floor space and expensive equipment to smaller, fledgling breweries entering the business, an agreement Goblet said has seen great successes in states like Colorado, with its booming beer industry.
The third and most exciting aspect of HB 243 will allow breweries to operate one on-site taproom along with three off-site satellite taprooms, placing breweries on parity with wineries in the state. Before today, breweries were limited to two taprooms, greatly restricting the flow of delicious, locally brewed beer to the thirstier parts of the state.
Prior to today’s new laws, breweries in the state of New Mexico faced a choice: Register as a restaurant and obtain a license to sell wine – but forego package sales and distribution of your brews – or opt for distribution but keep customers hungry and wineless. That all changed today with the effecting of SB 238.
Goblet said he felt “all brew pubs throughout the state should be able to have their products readily available for distribution and sale,” and this law will allow a number of brew pubs – Second Street in Santa Fe, Turtle Mountain in Rio Rancho and Pecan Grill & Brewery in Las Cruces among them – to serve food and drinks as well as package their product to go, a clear win-win in Goblet’s eyes.
The final and biggest law passed – and the one Goblet was celebrating with an early-afternoon bottle of bubbly – is SB 440, which allows reciprocity between the state’s breweries and wineries where there previously was none.
“Before this historic day, breweries were only able to sell to other breweries and wineries were only able to sell to other wineries,” Goblet said.
No more.
Under the new law, brewers are able to sell locally produced wines to oenophiles in their taprooms and breweries, and the state’s numerous wineries are now able to serve frosty, local craft beers, giving a huge boost to both industries and producers. This new law can uniquely benefit wineries and vineyards – popular venues for birthdays, weddings and all other manner of celebration – that were formerly limited to serving only wine.
The law also allows ciders, which were formerly restricted under the same rule as wines, to be served at breweries. Given their similarities to beer – ABV, serving size and drinking vessel – Goblet said this move was only logical, and also gives the growing market of gluten-free drinkers options at establishments where there none.
“We’re really enthusiastic about everything going on in and all the work that’s gone on to support the beer, wine – and cider, of course – industry in New Mexico,” Goblet said.
ZAK HANSEN
The Truant 