Wineries vs. Distilleries: How U.S. Production Splits
Of the four TTB permit classes, two are production tiers, and wine outnumbers spirits more than three to one.
The two production classes
The TTB List of Permittees tracks four FAA Basic Permit classes: winery, distillery, importer, and wholesaler. Two of those make a product, wineries and distilleries, while importers and wholesalers move products through the supply chain. By the registry, the production side leans heavily toward wine:
| Production class | Federal permits |
|---|---|
| Bonded wineries | 18,038 |
| Distilled spirits plants (DSPs) | 5,590 |
Counts from the TTB List of Permittees (published April 2025). Breweries are not in this dataset, they file a separate Brewer's Notice the TTB does not release publicly.
Why wineries outnumber distilleries
A bonded winery permit has historically been the more accessible of the two. Wine can be made from grapes or other fruit at small scale, farm winery licenses exist in many states, and direct-to-consumer wine shipping is widely permitted, so small operations can reach a market. The result is a long tail of small wineries spread across nearly every state.
Distilling is more tightly regulated because spirits carry the highest alcohol content. For decades, most states assumed distilleries would be large industrial operations selling only through distributors, and craft-distillery license tiers and tasting-room rights arrived only over the past decade or so. That history keeps the DSP count, 5,590, well below the winery count.
What "craft" means here
"Craft" has no single federal legal definition, and the TTB issues the same permit class to a small producer and a large one. Industry groups draw their own lines: the American Craft Spirits Association, for example, caps a craft spirits producer at 750,000 proof gallons of annual production (roughly 375,000 cases). The permit registry does not record production volume, so it cannot label a permit "craft" or "industrial" - it only records that a business is federally licensed to produce.
The three-tier system
Regardless of size, producers operate inside the three-tier system that emerged after Prohibition:
- Tier 1, Producers: wineries and distilleries
- Tier 2, Importers and wholesalers: the businesses that bring products in and distribute them to retailers
- Tier 3, Retailers: liquor stores, bars, restaurants (licensed by the states, not in the federal registry)
This structure is why the registry's two largest classes are importers (21,314) and wholesalers (38,648), not producers, the middle tier carries the volume of distribution that connects 23,628 producers to the shelf. Many states allow exceptions, such as winery direct-to-consumer shipping, but the three-tier system remains the default framework.
What the count can and can't tell you
What it tells you: The winery and distillery counts show how many businesses are federally licensed to produce wine and spirits, and how that splits by state. A state with a deep winery count has a broad wine industry; a state with many DSPs has an active distilling base.
What it doesn't tell you: It says nothing about output. One large producer can out-make hundreds of small ones, and the registry carries no production, revenue, or scale figures. Kentucky, for example, ranks lower than California by distillery count but leads the country by whiskey volume, a distinction the permit data cannot surface.
Frequently asked questions
How many wineries and distilleries are there?
The TTB List of Permittees records 18,038 bonded wineries and 5,590 distilled spirits plants, wineries outnumber distilleries by more than three to one.
Does the registry show "craft" vs "industrial"?
No. The TTB issues the same permit class to small and large producers, and the registry records no production volume. It cannot separate craft from industrial, only that a business holds a federal permit to produce.
Why aren't breweries compared here?
Breweries file a Brewer's Notice under the Internal Revenue Code, which the TTB treats as protected taxpayer information (IRC §6103) and does not publish. Because PlainAlcohol uses only the public List of Permittees, it has no brewery counts to compare.
Where does this data come from?
All counts come from the TTB "List of Permittees," the public federal registry of active FAA Basic Permits and DSP permits (published April 2025, public domain). No proprietary aggregators are used.
Every figure on PlainAlcohol is rendered directly from federal TTB permit data, no number is typed in by an editor. This guide draws directly on the TTB List of Permittees, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.