First, we are EXTREMELY grateful to be in business. This year has been devastating for so many – we recognize that we are so fortunate to still be brewing beer at all. Thank you for all your incredible support. However, legislators and the DCP continue to make it very difficult to stay in business.
For some strange reason, State lawmakers decided now would be a great time to revoke ALL existing liquor licenses and make everyone re-apply for new licenses with higher fees and greater restrictions.
As a result, our “new” brewery license does not permit the sale of cider or wine. You may have noticed that giant placard in front of the plaza and been wondering to yourself, “Huh. I thought they did that already.” Yes. We did. But since they changed the rules, we had to apply for another “new” license to permit cider & wine sales again.
There is a catch.
Lawmakers also decided to limit your choices by restricting us to only Connecticut wine and cider producers. This won’t change our cider menu, it will greatly disrupt our wine program.
We had sourced wine in single serve vessels (cans & small bottles) to ensure that we didn’t waste any wine and that you were always getting a fresh pour. Now, we must use bottles which means, we will be frequently dumping unfinished bottles at the end of the weekend. While we hope local winemakers will see this as an opportunity and step up with cans or small format bottles, it’s an extremely frustrating time to force this change. Other higher volume breweries face the far more dire circumstance that no CT wineries can reasonably keep them supplied!
This is all to say, we are very sorry for this interruption. If you feel compelled to learn more or even to contact your state rep, check out conn.beer for more details on how these changes are hurting breweries.
More than anything, this is here to explain why wine & cider service at Luppoleto will be interrupted. We are frustrated by this (as you can probably imagine) but again, we know we are fortunate to be in business. Still, we believe it’s important to bring this to the attention of our great community of craft beer drinkers. You have a much louder voice than us breweries. And it is stuff like this that may be the final blow to your local brewery that has been struggling to stay afloat. That’s why we are asking for your help.
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