Legislators look at ways to accommodate Indiana's growing wine industry

INDIANAPOLIS — Ask Rep. Rhonda Rhoads how she got involved with sponsoring a bill to boost Indiana’s wine industry and she’ll tell you a story about how much the state has changed.

She’ll tell you that until a few years go there were two things she never thought she’d do.

The first: to use the Spanish she learned in high school some 40 years ago. The second: to attend festivals dedicated to Indiana wine.

“I’m 60 years old,” said Rhoads, R-Corydon. “When I was younger I never thought either of those things would happen.”

But just as Indiana’s Hispanic population has surged — an 81 percent increase in the last 10 years, according to the 2010 census — so has its wine industry.

When Rhoads’ predecessors in the Indiana General Assembly created the Indiana Wine Grape Council in 1989 to boost Hoosier wine as an economic development tool, there were  nine wineries in the state.

Now there are more than 50. Five of them are in Rhoads’ home community of Harrison County on the Ohio River. Three of the five opened in the last three years. 

“It’s testament to how sophisticated Indiana wine has become,” said Rep. Ed Clere, R-New Albany, who co-authored the wine bill with Rhoads.

It’s also a boon for tourism in rural areas where the state’s wineries tend to be located.

According to the Indiana Grape Wine Council, 800,000 visitors tour Indiana wineries yearly, and Hoosier-made wine and related products add $33 million to the state economy.

While most Indiana wineries are located in southern Indiana, more have been opening in the north as well. There are half-dozen located near the Michigan border.

Wineries are diverse in size and scope and quality. Some import grapes from  other states; others have their own vineyards. Some make wine from ingredients other than  grapes.

Bill would expand permits

In Elwood, the New Day Meadery produces honey-based wines and cider made from honey and fruit grown on Indiana family farms.

“The diversity of the industry is impressive,” said state Sen. Tim Lanane, D-Anderson, whose district includes the meadery. He helped carry the wine bill in the Senate and added a provision to help boost the small craft breweries that have sprung up around the state.

The bill seems meager in comparison to much of the legislation passing through the Statehouse this session.

It expands the number of festival permits, from 30 to 45, where the Indiana wineries can legally serve and sell their wine by the glass and bottle. And if passed, the bill would compel the Indiana Alcohol and Tobacco Commission to study how other states have expanded their wine industries through the use on online sales.

That study, to be completed by year’s end, is significant because the ATC has blocked online sales, due to concerns about age verification of customers and fears that minors would use the Internet to order alcohol. 

Decades-old laws

Ted Huber, whose Huber Orchard, Winery & Vineyards in Starlight, is the largest grape-wine producer in the state, calls the bill small but significant in the scope of Indiana’s restrictive alcohol laws, which have evolved at a snail’s pace since Prohibition.

“This isn’t going to affect the mass producers of wine,” Huber said of the bill. “This is about reaching the consumer who’s actually seen the vineyard where a bottle of wine comes from and wants to enjoy that experience after they return home.”

The fact that Indiana wineries are limited in the number of festival permits they can get from the state reflects what Clere calls the “cautious approach” that legislators have taken when it comes to alcohol sales in Indiana.

When Indiana became a state in 1816, one of the first acts by the General Assembly was to ban the sale of booze on Sunday. The law still stands today, despite efforts to repeal it.

After the federal prohibition on alcohol sales was repealed in 1933, Indiana legislators set up a multi-tiered system, still largely intact today, that separated the producers of alcohol  from wholesalers and retailers.

It wasn’t until 1971 that the Legislature passed a law that allowed wineries to operate and sell wine from tasting rooms on their premises.

In 2001, Huber worked with lawmakers to pass a law create a special Indiana artisan distiller’s license, which made it possible for wineries to install small-scale stills to make brandy. But so far, Huber — through his Starlight Distillery — is the only Indiana commercial winemaker to venture into brandy-making.

A bill filed by Clere that would have expanded the artisan-distiller license into other spirits died early in the session.

Huber thinks it’s just a matter of time before the bill finds favor, because constituents will push for it.

“This is all consumer-driven,” Huber said of the rise of Indiana wine. “It’s part of the big ‘local food’ movement where products grown in Indiana have increasing appeal.”