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South Carolina alcohol law mixes things up

SOUTH CAROLINA - The only state to require that bars and restaurants serve liquor from mini-bottles is ending the practice Saturday, and business owners and bartenders are trying to figure out how the change will affect their bottom line.

One result is obvious: South Carolina bars and restaurants no longer will be known for serving the nation's strongest drinks.

Bartenders in the state are scrambling to learn how to make "free pour" drinks — how to use a jigger to add the right quantity of liquor and mixes in drink orders. The mini-bottle law has been in effect since 1973, and bartenders who've worked only in the Palmetto State have never had to measure liquor. They just grabbed a 1.7-ounce mini-bottle and dumped in the contents.

"I think it'll be very entertaining to watch a lot of bartenders who've never tended bar anywhere except Charleston figure it out, including myself," says Cat Hollen, 26, a bartender at Gene's Haufbrau, a Charleston bar where bartenders have been getting two-day training sessions from Atlanta pour artists.

Beginning Sunday, businesses can use any size bottle of distilled spirits. They may use mini-bottles exclusively, change to larger bottles or use a combination.

Vestige of Prohibition

South Carolina voters amended their constitution last year to toss out the mini-bottle mandate, which required that every drink sold in bars, restaurants and hotels be made using the little containers found on commercial airlines and in hotel minibars. The state's mini-bottle law is one of the last echoes of the Prohibition era, the period from 1920-33 when the federal government banned alcohol.

Another vestige of Prohibition is the so called blue laws that ban Sunday sales of alcohol in 16 states, says Frank Coleman, senior vice president of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, a trade association for producers and marketers. "We're seeing more counties ... particularly in Bible Belt parts of the South ... that decide to go wet" after seeing neighboring counties get an economic boost from doing so. In the past four years, 13 states have added Sunday liquor sales, he says. Still, the nation has more than 500 dry counties, says Jacqueline Byers, research director for the National Association of Counties.

Before 1973, South Carolina did not allow liquor to be sold by the drink. People brought their own bottles into bars and restaurants and bought mixers and ice. The practice, however, prompted concern that patrons could knock back as much booze as they wanted, then hit the highways.

Voters in 1972 approved a constitutional amendment to allow liquor by the drink in containers of 2 ounces or less, says Tom Sponseller, president of the Hospitality Association of South Carolina, which represents 2,300 restaurants, taverns and hotels.

"This was not really unique in the 1970s," Sponseller says, noting that several other states had similar laws at the time. "Over the years, as moderation became the big thing, the little bottles fell out of favor."

By 1990, Utah, which has some of the nation's most stringent liquor-control laws, was the only other state with a mini-bottle law. It ended the practice that year.

"Back in the 1970s, when South Carolina and about nine other states also used them, they only could hold 1.5 ounces," Sponseller says. "When the liquor industry went metric in the '80s, they went to 1.7 ounces."

By 2004, most bars and restaurants around the USA served liquor in 1- to 1.25-ounce shots, Sponseller says. At 1.7 ounces per drink, South Carolina imbibers enjoyed the nation's most potent drinks. And they enjoyed plenty of them: 60 million to 70 million mini-bottles of liquor are sold in the state each year, Sponseller says.