WASHINGTON, D.C. — Representatives of the West’s wine and beer industries say they are grateful for a bit of good news after a tough year.

The $1.4 trillion year-end omnibus bill Congress passed last week includes several wins for the nation’s wine industry, including permanent tax credits for craft beverage producers and funding for research on the impact of wildfire smoke on wine grapes.

Wine and beer leaders nationwide welcomed the legislation after an otherwise challenging 2020.

“I’m gratified that Oregon’s winegrowers are among the major winners in the tax incentives I worked to make permanent,” Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, who pushed for the legislation, said in a statement.

Wyden said he has seen firsthand how tax incentives have created jobs and pushed industry growth in the wine sector.

Jim Trezise, president of WineAmerica, an industry advocacy group, called it a “major breakthrough.”

The tax credit legislation, called the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform, or CBMTRA, was first introduced in 2015 by Wyden, who at the time worked with the Oregon Winemakers Association on the bill. CBMTRA was designed to deliver tax savings for wineries, distillers and beer brewers and provide certainty about future tax rates.

Congress passed the bill for two years in 2017 and for one year in 2019, but it was set to expire Dec. 31, 2020.

Alex Sokol Blosser, president of the Oregon Winegrowers Association, said in a statement that he is thankful for permanent tax credits “that provide businesses certainty during a chaotic time.”

Craft brewers and hop growing associations say they are also pleased to see that the federal beer excise tax rates will become permanent.

Securing permanent federal excise tax recalibration for small brewers has been a top priority for the Brewers Association since 2009. Before CBMTRA, the association says the tax rate was volatile from year to year. Passage of CBMTRA, the association reports, represents an annual savings of $80 million for craft breweries nationwide. 

This bill makes permanent the federal excise tax rate of $3.50 per barrel on the first 60,000 barrels, $16 per barrel after that up to 6 million barrels and $18 per barrel after the first 6 million barrels. 

In a statement, Katie Marisic, federal affairs manager at the Brewers Association, said the bill contained “significant assistance for America’s small and independent breweries.”

Sokol Blosser of the wine association also said that the wine industry appreciates the funding to study how smoke from wildfires impacts wine grapes.

The bill includes $3.5 million for smoke impact research, which researchers will use to help winegrowers and winemakers better manage impacts of smoke exposure. The funding came after months of lobbying from winegrower associations in California, Oregon and Washington.

“As the threat of wildfires increase, understanding how smoke compounds affect wine grape quality has become critically important to our wineries and growers,” he said.