After spotting a recent article about another type of wine spill I thought it time to add an update to this blog post. The article, “Wine spills into road” couldn’t help but catch my eye. This was a shipment of bulk wine moving from one winery facility to another. This is what the TTB refers to as a “transfer in bond”. There are specific TTB recordkeeping details to point out that the sending winery would be responsible for documenting afterwards.
Any “in bond” wine is wine which has not had the federal excise taxes paid on it. When wineries ship bulk wines they are required to complete a document the TTB calls a “transfer in bond record”. For winery folks this is called a bill of lading, or just BOL. The truck that was hauling these containers of bulk wine and then lost some from one after going around a corner would have had the completed BOL (transfer in bond) record with them which listed among the required details, the gallons being shipped. So then as a result of the accident those gallons changed. The sending winery is the responsible party in all of this as far as revising the BOL to reflect the gallons sent to match the amount AFTER the spill. They would revise the BOL and send that updated copy to the receiving winery and also make sure to report the updated gallons sent on their 5120.17 report, line 15- transferred in bond.
The other documentation for the sending winery to be aware of and follow up on for this type of wine loss would be filing the TTB claim form that I wrote about in this post originally. For more details on the details behind filing a TTB claim form please read on in my original post here.
Original post here from 2013 covers when bulk wine is spilled as a result of an accident at a winery site:
I just recently read a story about a spill that happened at a winery where a tank holding 7,500 gallons of wine had a bolt break, causing the wine to spill out and head rapidly down the drain.
I’ve actually seen a few of these wine loss events happen over the years at different wineries and definitely the bulk of the activity happens frantically as the scene originally unfolds. Cellar crew scrambling madly to catch the wine spraying out from the tank and re-direct it into another one to minimize the overall loss as much as possible. A pretty incredible event to watch to see the crew spring into action and coordinate their efforts to manage the chaos as best as possible.
But what about afterwards? After the frenzy has died down, wine gallons have gone down the drain, and the rest have been relocated into other tanks/vessels? Do you know what details need to be sent to the TTB to inform them of the wine loss?
There is a specific procedure that you’d want to follow in the event of a substantial loss resulting from the type of scenario I mentioned above. Just like your winery will file a claim for the loss with their insurance company you’ll also file a claim with the TTB describing many of the same details. They want to know because those wine gallons down the drain represent lost revenue to them & they want an explanation for that. The TTB’s requirements for submitting the claim form (form # 5620.8 by the way) are within 6 months of the accident. That’s a pretty hefty time allowance if you ask me- which can tend to mean the longer you wait to file it the bigger the chances many of the details they require are forgotten. Here are just some of those details:
- Full description of how the accident occurred
- Details of the wine in the tank, tank #, tax class/alcohol, wine blend, start gallons
- Volume of wine lost, volume of wine saved if any and where it went. (Into a new tank or put in with another blend)
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