Governor signs HB 2025

West Virginia will soon have much more progressive, business-friendly beverage alcohol laws for retailer sales beginning May 10. The WV Alcohol Beverage Control Administration announced that Governor Jim Justice signed HB 2025 on Thursday.

This is especially good news for WV bars, restaurants, bottle shops, and beer festivals, and therefore, great news for WV beer, wine, and spirits consumers. We gave the governor a hard time earlier for his proposed increases to alcohol taxes, a position he later back off from, but we commend the governor for supporting and signing HB 2025. It will help our beverage alcohol retailers build their businesses though providing much better service to their customers.

Some of the important provisions highlighted by the WVABCA in its announcement of the bill’s signage included:

• Curbside in-person or in-vehicle pickup, third party [home] delivery of sealed beer and beer growlers, sealed wine and wine growlers, and sealed craft cocktail growlers when a licensee is appropriately licensed;
• Sealed liquor drinks in craft cocktail growlers for food or meal orders to go (no person who has consumed alcohol can purchase a to-go order with a craft cocktail growler); 
• 6:00 am sales for certain Class A on-premises and Class B off-premises licensees; 
• Covid-19 fee reduction for Private Clubs; 
• Additional outdoor dining and street dining options for beer, wine and liquor, the emphasis is on “dining”; 
• Hard Cider Tax Reduction and growlers; 
• New private club licenses types for private club bars, private club restaurants, private caterers, private farmers’ markets, private wedding venues or barns, private tennis clubs, private professional sport stadiums, private multi-sport complexes, one day charitable auctions, multi-vendor fairs and festivals and etc. 

Great boost for retailer sector

The new law scores most positively in giving bars and restaurants and off-premise (grocery/liquor store) retailers more flexibility in conducting alcohol sales. Several of the provisions had been contained in the governor’s temporary emergency orders during the COVID pandemic, but the bill went much further. We especially like that the new law allows beer festivals, for the first time, to bring in new breweries with temporary one-day permits, a move which, if festivals take advantage of it, could broaden the menu of beers available at the festivals. We might see many new beers at festivals as soon as this summer — beers which are not otherwise available in the state. Other states have had this ability for years, and it makes a great difference to the attractiveness of their festivals.

No direct-to-consumer shipping

The new law misses the mark, however, in the area of direct to consumer shipping of beer and distilled spirits. It does not allow a method for brewers or distillers to sell directly to a WV consumer and then sip the beer/spirits directly to the purchaser’s home. Hopefully, this deficiency can be corrected in the next session. (See this link for an article on WV direct shipping.)

Cideries benefit most

Cideries were the producing sector most benefiting from the new law. It lowers the cider tax rate substantially, gives cider more market flexibility, and puts cideries in a stronger position for growth. Other alcohol sector producers did not fare so well. As the bill primarily dealt with retail sales, it does not address a list of needs that our brewers and distillers have to give their industries more business operational flexibility and the ability to better compete with out-of-state producers working under more flexible laws in other states.

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Past coverage of HB 2025

A more detailed summary of on-premise provisions in HB 2025

Wide-ranging impact of HB 2025