Floridians will soon be able to buy giant bottles of wine – up to 15 liters in volume – under legislation signed into law Thursday by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The formidable 15-liter bottles, dubbed Nebuchadnezzars, should be on shelves when the law takes effect on July 1.
Florida law has barred commercial sale of wine bottles larger than one gallon, unless it’s sold in reusable 5.16-gallon containers, or about 20 liters. But Nebuchadnezzars, tower-like bottles of wine, are sought after by some consumers for weddings, anniversaries or just bling.
“There was really no public policy reason why we should have this (previous) regulation and this is a regulation that had been in place for many, many decades,” DeSantis said at a bill-signing ceremony in Wine Watch, a Fort Lauderdale wine shop.
DeSantis added that “this is an example of us cutting unnecessary red tape,” while praising the persistence of state Rep. Chip LaMarca, the Fort Lauderdale Republican who’d been trying to get the measure (HB 583) through the Legislature since 2021. And former state Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, had carried a similar bill for years before that.
Cheers!DeSantis signs bill to allow sales of bigger bottles of wine
LaMarca said he’d confronted industry and consumer opponents to the bottle expansion. But he pointed to a symmetry of events that may have helped push this year’s bill across the finish line.
“This is an Italian-American owned business, an Italian-American governor and an Italian-American state representative. Wine is a big part of our culture, whether it’s the American side or the Italian side,” LaMarca said, who said he went to high school with Wine Watch owner Andrew Lampasone.
The new law also permits smaller big bottles, which include 4.5-liter, 6-liter, 9-liter, and 12-liter sizes.
Before pivoting his attention to wine, DeSantis extolled a couple of courtroom triumphs from the previous day, allowing him to throw some jabs at his favored targets: The news media and his political adversaries.
A federal tribunal composed of three judges upheld a congressional redistricting plan that DeSantis pushed through the Legislature in 2022. This plan had been challenged on the grounds of racial discrimination for eliminating a district in North Florida, which a Black Democrat had long held.
The tribunal ruled with a unanimous Agreement that opponents, which included Common Cause Florida and the state’s chapter of NAACP, did not substantiate that the state lawmakers acted out of racial malice. However, the judges decided not to determine whether DeSantis may have been motivated by race.
DeSantis applauded the ruling, countering critics who assumed the congressional plan would be rejected.
“There’s no shortage of people trying to offer analysis,” DeSantis stated. “However, when it comes down to it, their assumptions turn out to be baseless. … We were correct in asserting that the courts would uphold the constitutionality of (the map).”
The governor also reiterated his ‘gnashing of teeth’ rhetoric as he mocked those who criticized his decision to revoke the autonomous status of Walt Disney World two years prior. This punitive measure was taken in response to the company’s opposition to the state’s parental rights law, which detractors have labelled as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
A resolution between Disney and the state was agreed upon this Wednesday, thus concluding two years of legal proceedings.
Under the deal, the company abandoned development agreements it made just before the state takeover. A comprehensive plan from 2020 will continue to be in effect, a provision helpful to the company, but the new DeSantis-backed board can still make changes to it.
“Right on parents’ rights, right on changing the local government and right that all the covenants and development agreements made at the 11th hour are null and void,” DeSantis said. “You saw a lot of gnashing of teeth last year. Now you don’t hear as much.”
John Kennedy is a reporter in the USA TODAY Network’s Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jkennedy2@gannett.com, or on Twitter at @JKennedyReport.
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