Top 10 US Cities by TTB Alcohol Permit Concentration
City-level breakdown of the TTB federal permit registry. PlainAlcohol ranks US cities by total count of active permits across the winery, distillery, importer, and wholesaler classes, surfacing the dense urban clusters that anchor the regulated alcohol trade.
Research period:
Research question
Among the cities in PlainAlcohol's TTB permit database, which carry the highest concentration of active alcohol permits, and how does the permit mix break down across wineries, distilleries, importers, and wholesalers at the city level?
Methodology
At render time we query the PlainAlcohol cities table for city, state, producer_count, and the four permit-class counts - winery_count, distillery_count, importer_count, and wholesaler_count - rank by producer_count descending, and return the top 10. Every number on this page is read live from the database; none is hardcoded.
The underlying data is the TTB "List of Permittees," the federal registry of active FAA Basic Permits released by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau through its FOIA reading room (published April 2025, public domain). A city's row aggregates the permits whose permit-of-record address falls in that city. That address is for federal correspondence and may differ from the actual facility location.
Coverage: the registry covers wineries, distilleries, importers, and wholesalers. It does not cover breweries, which file a separate Brewer's Notice the TTB does not release (IRC §6103), so no brewery figure appears anywhere on this site. A permit is an administrative record, not a production figure, and the data is a point-in-time snapshot with no issue dates, it cannot be read as a trend.
A second chart ranks cities by distillery count alone, a related cut from the same table. Reproducibility: the SQL is visible in the page source frontmatter, so any reader can run it against the same database and reproduce the result.
See the methodology page for the full source detail.
Top 10 US Cities by TTB Alcohol Producer Permit Concentration
Live data, current as of the most recent source-data refresh
The ranked top 10
Every row below reflects the current the TTB dataset and updates automatically the next time we refresh it.
| # | City | State | Active permits | Wineries | Distilleries | Importers | Wholesalers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Napa | California | 1,798 | 789 | 23 | 232 | 754 |
| 2 | Miami | Florida | 1,216 | 9 | 13 | 655 | 539 |
| 3 | New York | New York | 1,108 | 7 | 2 | 551 | 548 |
| 4 | Los Angeles | California | 838 | 9 | 12 | 362 | 455 |
| 5 | Houston | Texas | 782 | 60 | 30 | 318 | 374 |
| 6 | Chicago | Illinois | 679 | 21 | 20 | 283 | 355 |
| 7 | Brooklyn | New York | 662 | 15 | 36 | 270 | 341 |
| 8 | Paso Robles | California | 641 | 461 | 16 | 34 | 130 |
| 9 | Santa Rosa | California | 622 | 257 | 8 | 77 | 280 |
| 10 | San Francisco | California | 573 | 58 | 12 | 176 | 327 |
Source: U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, TTB Public Permit Registry (city-resolved). Values are current as of our most recent the TTB data refresh. U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, TTB Public Permit Registry (city-resolved). Values are current as of our most recent the TTB data refresh.
Findings
Top entity in the ranking
The top-ranked record in this dataset is Napa, with a value of 1,798 on the Active permits column. The full top-10 set is rendered in the table above. Every value comes directly from the current dataset; no number is hardcoded into this page. When the TTB publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update automatically.
Distribution shape
The gap between the top-ranked record (1,798) and the 10th-ranked record (573) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.
Aggregate context
Across the full population behind this ranking, here are the summary statistics: how many records exist in total, the sum of the ranking metric across all qualifying records, and the mean per-record value. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking metric are excluded). This aggregate row is computed from the same dataset that powers the ranking above.
Source provenance
The records in this ranking originate from U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, specifically the TTB Public Permit Registry (city-resolved). PlainAlcohol ingests each new release from the TTB and republishes the figures here automatically, so this page always reflects the current dataset rather than a fixed snapshot. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and the transformation steps applied during ETL.
Why this ranking matters
Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and spot concentration and outliers. The city pages linked from each row give the full per-city context: the breakdown by permit class and the named permit holders on file. The methodology page explains how the registry defines each permit class.
What this analysis cannot tell us
City-level counts carry the same caveats as state counts: they are administrative permit records, not production volume or commercial activity. The address in the registry is the permit-of-record address for federal correspondence and may not be the actual facility location, multi-site businesses often register a single headquarters city. The registry covers wineries, distilleries, importers, and wholesalers; it does not cover breweries, which file a separate Brewer's Notice the TTB does not publish, so no brewery figure appears here. Importer- and wholesaler-heavy cities reflect distribution and port logistics rather than local production. This ranking is by absolute count and is not adjusted for city population.
Secondary cut from the same source
Top 10 cities by distillery permit count
Sources
- TTB Public Permit Registry, city-level address resolution - https://www.ttb.gov/permit-online