The Next Draft

THE NEXT DRAFT Despite peace between brewers, wholesalers, distribution bill may be stuck in political quagmire

MATTHEW TOTA

Four years ago, House Speaker Robert DeLeo told brewers and wholesalers they “better get serious” about working together to end their bitter feud over the state law that controls their contracts.

DeLeo was addressing a piece of legislation that would have repealed the so-called beer-franchise law. Brewers had amassed enough support to get a bill into the State House. Distributors, carrying far more political muscle, picketed. Doomed from the start, the bill died.

DeLeo, despite his patronizing tone, was not wrong: The two sides should reach their own compact before getting lawmakers involved. At that point, though, brewers and distributors could not have been further apart on reaching a deal.

It took a global pandemic, but they did finally strike a deal in July, agreeing to a bill that allows brewers producing fewer than 250,000 barrels (about 3.4 million cases) a year to end their relationship with a distributor as long as they give 30 days’ notice and pay “fair market value” for their brand rights. The Senate approved the bill in record time.

DeLeo likely saw the headlines. You couldn’t miss them.

And yet, more than two months later, the distribution bill remains stalled in his shop. Call me naïve, but I thought a bill universally praised and created to save jobs and support small business hindered by an unprecedented pandemic would pass without delay.

No, this is Massachusetts.

According to the State House News Service, people close to the distribution bill speculate that it

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your goal/I’m not a just a boy, I’m a man/I’m not just a man, I’m a god/I’m not just a god, I’m a maker.” This doesn’t feel like it should be such an immensely vulnerable lyric, but somehow, this towering verse and its exquisite delivery gives the listener a glimpse of the persona’s heart, and it’s gorgeous.

The album hits a sort of caesura with the tender “Ndimakukonda,” a

Cans are filled with Wachusett Blueberry along the line at Wachusett Brewery last year.

FILE PHOTO/ASHLEY GREEN

has become a “bargaining chip” for negotiations between the House and Senate on unrelated issues. DeLeo and other influential members of the House may be holding the bill back because the Senate has not acted on legislation crucial to their agenda, including a climate change bill and a tax bill aimed at generating revenue for transportation projects.

As of this writing, DeLeo has not commented on why the distribution bill is frozen. And other lawmakers have been saying more important issues overshadowed the bill. The legislative session was extended until the end of the year, they said, leaving plenty of time to get to it.

State Rep. John Mahoney, DWorcester, had filed a failed amendment at the end of July that would have tacked the distribution bill onto a larger job creation bill. He told the spare and lovely song bolstered by harmonies in what an NPR article identifies as Chichewa, the language spoken in Malawi, where Anjimile’s family is from. “Your parents think I’m crazy,” he sings, “I can’t say they’re wrong/I’m something of a soldier marching into song/Be honest with me baby, are you here to stay?/I’m asking you to love me every single day.”

It’s a beautiful sentiment, delivered with warmth and affection. State House News Service then that he did not believe the bill would get ensnared in political squabbling.

“I don’t think there’s a whole lot of intrigue with it,” Mahoney said.

Meanwhile, Senate President Karen Spilka, one of the distribution bill’s more vocal supporters in the State House, issued a dire warning about what would happen to some breweries if the bill did not get passed.

“Both sides agreed, we adopted that agreement and the Senate passed it, and it’s pending in the House now,” Spilka said at a recent meeting of MetroWest business leaders, according to a State House News Service report. “I am hearing that some of the industry, some of the craft brewers, are concerned that they may need to close if this situation isn’t ameliorated.”

The scary thing is, Spilka’s comPerhaps that’s what makes the sense of loss in the title track so painful. “By the lemon tree we remember,” he sings, “How your flame was free, every ember/Whining to the skies, ‘Won’t you wake her?’/Cut me down to size, Giver Taker.”

We love, and sometimes that love is taken from us. It’s probably the oldest story, but it’s still the one that’s surest to resonate as familiar. Anjimile captures that ashen feeling with such alacrity that it becomes ments were not hyperbole.

With the pandemic closing their taprooms for months, breweries have had to rely more on brewing more beer for wholesale. Their on-premise market has taken a huge hit and distribution has never been more important.

“One way to put this is not every brewery has a large taproom, and taprooms are certainly without question a source of better margins, better revenue, the lifeblood of most new breweries,” said Keith Sullivan, vice president of the Massachusetts Brewers Guild and co-owner of Medusa Brewing Co. in Hudson. “Without taprooms being at full strength this winter, a lot of those breweries will be looking to go wholesale. I can think of two or three right now. It will keep them open and keep people employed. This is a job dependent thing now where it maybe wasn’t before.”

But some breweries have not signed on with a distributor because of the way the current law is written. First passed in 1971, the law effectively locks breweries into lifetime contracts with their distributors after six months of doing business. Even if a brewery feels underserved or flat-out ignored, it can do very little to cut ties with its distributor. Breaking the contract has proven nearly impossible without a long, costly legal fight.

“We have some breweries that are definitely in trouble right now,” Sullivan said. “I don’t want to say they would choose to close over entering into a relationship that would lock them in. But I can say they are holding out.”

Sullivan is frustrated over the House’s inaction on the distribution bill. But he’s hopeful it will move a bit more sharply painful on each resolution, as though he were echoing our own heartbreaks. And really, he is.

“After death, after life,” he sings, on the album’s closer, “Meet You There,” “I was up half the night/Hurricane never came/Not for me, not again.” He leaves us with something that’s not exactly resolution, but rather something just a tad more wistful. “I celebrate your celebration,” he sings. “I revel in your revelation/I holler in forward soon.

“We are still of the belief that it is basically in a holding pattern,” he said. “I don’t see any reason why it won’t. I know there are some very contentious bills that delayed the process in the previous session. It’s my opinion that this didn’t take priority in the last session. My hope is that in the upcoming session, once it kicks into gear, they will recognize the need for this to pass.”

On the other side, distributors also remain confident the bill will pass. Atlas Distributing Inc. president Joe Salois, who played a critical part in negotiations between brewers and wholesalers, said it is only a matter of time.

“We are hopeful and optimistic the House will take up and ultimately pass our agreed brewer bill during this session,” Salois said in an email. “I understand they have many big issues to deal with such as health care, budget shortfall, COVID, and others that are consuming their time, but hopefully sometime soon the brewer bill will be presented for vote. We continue to stay in contact with representatives in the House, and they too are optimistic about its passage.”

If Sullivan and Salois haven’t given up hope, then I won’t either. But many a bill has died mired in mucky politics.

I implore DeLeo and the rest of the House to pass this distribution bill and honor the hard-fought peace between brewers and distributors. Don’t let petty politics hold back our breweries — which, I may add, should be a point of pride for the state — especially when they’re hurting the most.

Brewers and distributors got seri

ous, Mr. Speaker. Now you need to. your hallelujah/In plain view your azaleas grew/I believe you now.”

It’s a familiar feeling, listening to those lines. Familiar enough to move one to tears. But it’s also, strangely, not an entirely sad ending, as the refrain that closes the opening number, “Your Tree,” refrains silently underneath the ending: “Nothing dies.” It’s that hope of meeting again that charges this album, and transforms it from simply sad and beautiful into something extraordinary.