Floridians soon will be able to pop the cork on a Nebuchadnezzar
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.
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 allows smaller big bottles, including 4.5-liter, 6-liter, 9-liter and 12-liter.
DeSantis also crows about courtroom victories
Before focusing on wine, DeSantis touted a pair of courtroom victories from a day earlier, enabling him to get in some digs at favorite targets: The news media and his political critics.
A three-judge federal panel upheld a congressional redistricting plan DeSantis pushed through the Legislature in 2022 that had been challenged as racially discriminatory for eliminating a district long held by a Black Democrat in North Florida.
The panel ruled unanimously that opponents including Common Cause Florida and the state’s NAACP, failed to prove that state lawmakers acted with racial animus, although the judges chose not to decide whether race may have motivated DeSantis.
DeSantis hailed the ruling and turned on critics who predicted the congressional plan would be overturned.
“You get a lot of people who try to offer analysis,” said DeSantis. “But then when rubber meets the road, it turns out they were full of hot air . ... We were right when we said (the map) would be upheld in the courts as constitutional.”
The governor also used the same “gnashing of teeth” reference in ridiculing those critical of him for stripping Walt Disney World’s self-governing status two years ago. The company was punished after speaking out against the state’s parental rights law, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by opponents.
A settlement was reached Wednesday between Disney and the state, ending two years of litigation.
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 – Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jken nedy2@gannett.com, or on Twitter at @JKennedyReport.