TTB Alcohol Permit Type Distribution: Winery, Distillery, Importer, Wholesaler
PlainAlcohol breaks down the TTB federal permit registry by its four permit classes, winery, distillery, importer, and wholesaler, surfacing the overall distribution of permits across the regulated alcohol supply chain.
Research period:
Research question
Across the full TTB federal permit registry tracked by PlainAlcohol, how is permit volume distributed across the four permit classes, and what does that distribution suggest about the structural shape of the US alcohol supply chain?
Methodology
At render time we query the PlainAlcohol permit_types table for name and total_count, ordered by total_count descending. The table holds exactly four rows, winery, distillery, importer, and wholesaler, one per FAA Basic Permit class. 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). Each total_count is the number of active permits in that class across the whole country.
Coverage: the four classes above are the only ones the TTB publishes. Breweries are not included, they file a separate Brewer's Notice under the Internal Revenue Code that the TTB does not release publicly (IRC §6103), so no brewery figure appears anywhere on this site. A single business can hold permits in more than one class, so the class totals do not sum to a count of distinct businesses.
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.
TTB Alcohol Permit Type Distribution: Winery, Distillery, Importer, Wholesaler
Live data, current as of the most recent source-data refresh
The ranked top 4
Every row below reflects the current the TTB dataset and updates automatically the next time we refresh it.
| # | Permit class | Active permits |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wholesaler | 38,648 |
| 2 | Importer | 21,314 |
| 3 | Winery | 18,038 |
| 4 | Distillery | 5,590 |
Source: U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, TTB Public Permit Registry (permit-class aggregation). 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 (permit-class aggregation). 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 Wholesaler, with a value of 38,648 on the Active permits column. The full top-4 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 (38,648) and the 4th-ranked record (5,590) 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-4 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 (permit-class aggregation). 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
A class-level breakdown shows the structural shape of the federally licensed alcohol trade: how many permits exist to import and wholesale versus to produce. The permit-class pages and the per-state pages give the full context, the named permit holders on file in each class. The methodology page explains how the registry defines each permit class.
What this analysis cannot tell us
These four classes are the FAA Basic Permit categories the TTB publishes in its List of Permittees: winery, distillery (DSP), importer, and wholesaler. A single business can hold permits in more than one class, many distributors hold both an importer and a wholesaler permit, so the sum of the class counts is not a count of distinct businesses. Breweries are not in this distribution: they file a separate Brewer's Notice under the Internal Revenue Code that the TTB does not release publicly (IRC §6103), so no brewery figure appears here. State-licensed retailers (bars, restaurants, package stores) are regulated by the states and are not in the federal registry. The classes here describe the federally licensed producer, importer, and wholesaler tiers only.
Secondary cut from the same source
Permit class distribution (alternative visualization)
Sources
- TTB Permit Class Definitions, Code of Federal Regulations Title 27 - https://www.ttb.gov/regulations-laws/code-of-federal-regulations