FIELD REPORT: Under four litres, the ban Trump signed stops the small distiller’s bottle

A few pallets of rye

James Lester’s distillery

The bottle of wheat rye that James Lester used to sell in the United States has not crossed the border since 12:01 a.m. this Tuesday, September 29.

Lester founded Sons of Vancouver in 2015, in British Columbia. Every year, he shipped a few pallets of that rye south, CBC News reports. Less than 10% of his business.

A small outfit. One product. Customers down south.

He had learned, CBC writes, to live with the ups and downs of tariffs. Not with this: being shut out of the American market.

A bottle. Not a barrel, not a tanker. A bottle. That is what the annex targets. Under four litres, it is banned.

It is a little sad, to be honest, he told CBC.

The last of the stock

He still has a bit of rye for sale online in the United States. It will be the last, he says, for who knows how long.

His American customers could come and buy it here. They could not take the bottle home, CBC notes.

Less than 10% is little on a balance sheet. It is a lot in a growth plan.

A case of six bottles has a weight the arms know by heart. In every small distillery, it is the same motion.

Lifting a case is already a trade.

Four litres

Annex I, line by line

The rule is written into the annex of the September 8 proclamation. It has to be read like a customs inventory. That is what it is.

Under four litres, rye is banned. Under four litres, so is vodka. Under four litres, rum, tequila, mezcal and brandy follow. Under four litres, liqueurs fall in turn. Under four litres, the other whiskies too.

Gin, beer, cider and sparkling wine are banned as soon as they are packaged.

The liquid does not change. The container decides.

Four litres is roughly five ordinary 750-millilitre bottles. A big can of paint.

Four litres. The border inside the border.

Bottles, cans, kegs

Above four litres, the annex changes its tone. Rye, bourbon, vodka and rum are banned there only if they are packaged.

Packaged, the annex defines: in bottles, cans, boxes, ready-to-serve kegs or similar containers, meant for the consumer.

The rest is not targeted. Bulk. The spirit that waits for someone else to bottle it.

The annex gives no reason. It lists.

Four litres, and the product becomes raw material.

September 15, the bulk

Two lines removed

That same September 8, Trump signed another proclamation. It amends the list of Canadian products hit with the 50% duty.

Its Part B runs two lines. Whiskies in containers over four litres. Liqueurs in containers over four litres.

For those two lines, the 50% duty no longer applies. The removals take effect on September 15, according to the White House fact sheet.

Two lines. Not one sentence to justify them.

What bulk becomes

Bulk is not drunk as it is. It travels by tanker or by barrel. It has no label yet. It has no brand yet.

It gets filled somewhere else, into bottles, under a name.

The Canadian bottle is stopped. The bulk whiskies in Part B, meanwhile, get in without that 50% duty.

The barrel goes through. The bottle stays behind.

On September 15, the barrel won. On the 29th, the bottle lost. Two dates, one direction.

That is the whole story in one sentence. The rest is about who stands on which side of the line.

Filling a bottle has become a taxable act.

Plants on each side of the border

The KPMG lawyer

Robert Glasgow, an international trade lawyer at KPMG Law, read the same annex. He draws the same map from it, according to CBC News.

The bulk exemption, he says, will partly spare the big multinational spirits companies that have bottling and blending facilities on each side of the border.

The weight will land on the smaller players. Breweries, distilleries, wineries, mostly independent, more dependent on the American market.

Who bottles where

A multinational can ship its whisky in bulk and bottle it down south. Two plants, two countries. One border, crossed before the label.

A small distillery fills its bottles at home. It has no plant on the other side. It has one address.

So I stand with the small distilleries that bottle here, against the annex signed September 8, because it stops the bottle under four litres and lets in bulk whiskies, freed from the 50% duty since September 15.

The text names no company. It does not need to. The map of the plants does the sorting.

The measure says it targets Canada. Mostly, it targets those who have only one country.

An open door for barrels. A closed one for bottles.

Two semis before midnight

Monday, at Maverick

Craig Peters founded Maverick Distillery. He runs it. On Monday, he had two semi-trailers rolling toward the border, he told Global News.

The goal: get across before midnight. Before every targeted product would be turned back.

Two trucks. One deadline. A race against an annex.

A truck backing up to a loading dock makes the same beep everywhere. It never says what it is carrying.

Maverick usually sent 20 to 25% of its production to the United States. That share drops to zero, he says.

A quarter. Then nothing.

Global News does not say whether the two trucks made it in time. Peters was already talking about the American market in the past tense.

One to three years

Peters sees a broad wave of support from Canadians for their local brands. He says so himself.

And yet, even with that support, the company is still behind where it would be if it could sell south. It will take, he estimates, a year, two or three to make up for the lost channel.

“We had a great competitive advantage for manufacturing, and we’re losing that,” he says.

A whole country buying local does not replace up to a quarter of production in one season.

Support is counted in bottles. The hole, in years.

Ninety-three percent

The September 9 statement

On September 9, Spirits Canada, the national association of spirits producers, published its response to the previous day’s announcement.

The United States is by far our largest export market, it writes. About 50% of Canadian spirits production depends on American demand.

In 2025, about 93% of the value of our spirits exports went to the United States. That is C$948.6 million, by its count.

Three numbers. One customer.

For the industry as a whole, nearly two billion dollars of production a year, half of it shipped to the United States, according to the association as cited by Global News.

Seven percent for everyone else

That leaves 7% for the rest of the world.

Seven. For Europe, Asia and Latin America combined.

That is not a replacement market. It is a margin.

Canadian producers have few ways to replace lost American demand in the short term, the association concludes.

The sector, it says, accounts for nearly 48,800 full-time equivalent jobs across the country.

You do not redirect ninety-three dollars out of every hundred with a press release…

Seven percent is a service entrance.

Under ten percent

What the economists say

The opposing argument deserves its strongest form. Here it is.

Going from a 50% duty to an embargo matters far less than going from free trade to an embargo, says economist Joseph Steinberg of the University of Toronto, cited by Global News.

The 50% duty already worked as a de facto ban, adds lawyer Patrick Childress of Holland & Knight, in an Associated Press dispatch.

Some winemakers said the same thing, according to CBC. The tariff had already shut them out.

The argument is serious. It comes from economists and lawyers. It does not come from Washington.

It still does not rescue the four-litre line. It only makes the line harder to see.

A tariff that was already closing

It is not wrong for a winery. It is not wrong for the national average. It is not true for Maverick, which was still rolling two trucks on Monday.

A closed market does not take delivery of semi-trailers.

Richard Alexander, president of Beer Canada, sums it up in one sentence to Global News: tonight’s ban turns a 50% tariff into a closed border, with no exemption.

Between a duty that costs and a door that shuts, there are businesses that were still paying.

Expensive is not closed. Closed is Tuesday.

No exemption under CUSMA

What Beer Canada says

Alexander’s phrase is worth pausing on. No CUSMA exemption, he says.

The Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement shields other products. Not these.

The 10% duties tied to forced labour, for instance, do not apply to CUSMA-compliant goods, The Canadian Press notes.

The September 29 ban does not recognize the agreement. It recognizes the container.

A treaty against a litre

A rye that meets the rules of origin, made here from grain grown here, is still stopped if it fits in a bottle.

A bulk whisky, compliant or not, slips through under the Part B line.

The treaty weighs nothing. The litre weighs everything.

That is a new hierarchy. Nobody voted for it anywhere.

A treaty weighs less than a cork.

Lodi, California

A 2,500-hectare vineyard

Now we have to look at the other side. This story does not hold up without the detour.

Ironstone Vineyards farms 2,500 hectares in Lodi, California. Its wines have not been available in Canada for a year and a half, CBC News reports.

Canada accounted for 20% of its exports, says Joan Kautz, its head of global sales and marketing. They built that market over thirty years, she says, and it vanished overnight.

Thirty years. One night.

Down 70%, down 87%

In 2025, after American bottles were pulled from our shelves, U.S. spirits exports to Canada fell 70%, and wine exports 87%, according to the Distilled Spirits Council, cited by CBC.

Some California wineries have reportedly filed for bankruptcy or chosen to close in recent months, according to information relayed by CBC.

It has to be said. Our boycott hurt.

Joan Kautz says she understands the message our empty shelves are sending. She does not like it, she says, but she understands it.

It was most of our provinces that emptied those shelves, in March 2025, in response to American tariffs. The small winemaker in Lodi paid for our move the way the small distiller in Vancouver pays for Washington’s.

That is true, and I am writing it down. It does not change this: on each side of the border, the one who pays is the same. The small one. And the four-litre line makes sure the big one gets through.

On each side, the small pay before the big.

What we drink, who we are

A product easy to replace

Why alcohol, exactly?

Because it is easy to replace, Glasgow answers. The customer finds a local bottle and still has a good night. Retaliation of this kind hits the other country harder than it hurts the home market.

His point applies to our provinces. It applies to the proclamation, too.

An identity in a bottle

We define ourselves partly by what we drink, economist Moshe Lander of Concordia University tells CBC.

Kentucky bourbon, California wine. Symbols before they are lines on a spreadsheet.

That is what makes them effective political targets, in his view.

A symbol gets hit at retail. Where it carries a label, a name, a town.

A bottle carries the name of a town on its label. A tanker carries a number.

In bulk, the spirit has no name yet. It has no town yet.

Hit the label, spare the tanker.

Six hundred seventy-three million

The Census Bureau numbers

The United States imported US$673 million worth of Canadian spirits in 2025, according to the Census Bureau as cited by CBC.

Wine: 62.1 million. Beer: 19.2 million.

Wine weighs little. Beer, even less. Spirits take the blow.

Six hundred seventy-three million is Washington’s tally, in U.S. dollars. Spirits Canada, in Canadian dollars, says 948.6 million. Two currencies, one dependence.

Alcohol makes up 87% of the value of the products banned this Tuesday, Jacob Jensen of the American Action Forum calculates, according to the Associated Press.

What the average hides

The total in play stays small next to the trade between the two countries. Jensen puts it at $967 million for 2025.

But spirits carry almost all of alcohol’s weight. And within spirits, the annex chooses again: the bottle, not the bulk.

A national number dilutes. An annex line concentrates.

Which of the two, the barrel or the bottle, has less margin to absorb the blow?

A small total, and a deep cut for the small.

The customer across the line

A rye you cannot bring home

Lester told CBC he had worked hard to build relationships down south. He wanted to grow there.

There is also the other end of the chain. The American customer who liked that rye.

He can no longer order it from his retailer. He can no longer bring it back from a trip. All he can count on now are the last bottles online.

A neighbour’s taste

The proclamation says it serves the American public interest. That customer is part of the public, too.

He asked for nothing. He does not vote in our provinces.

Who is going to explain it to him?

A lost customer does not come back by proclamation.

A cold glass in hand, an autumn evening, and a brand that may never return to his shelf.

A neighbour denied a taste, and nobody counting him.

An empty table on the 29th

What Spirits Canada asked for

On September 9, Spirits Canada urged Ottawa, the provinces and Washington to return to the table before the 29th.

Spirits Canada wanted an urgent solution. Spirits Canada wanted stable, predictable market access. Spirits Canada wanted to protect businesses and workers in both countries.

The 29th came. The talks have been mostly on pause since August, Global News writes.

Twenty days. No table.

The association had set a deadline. It was the right date. It was not the right calendar.

Decades of ties

Producers in both countries spent decades building trade relationships and integrated supply chains, the association pointed out.

The integrated chain is exactly the one that survives, through bulk. It is the small chain, the one that runs from barrel to bottle under one roof, that breaks.

And yet the Spirits Canada statement says not one word about the four-litre line.

The line flies under the radar. It is written in the fine print.

An annex does not hold a press conference.

The bottle filled here

Above the line, below the line

Above four litres, some bulk whiskies get in without the 50% duty. Above four litres, liqueurs too. Above four litres, the bottler down south keeps its raw material.

Below the line, Sons of Vancouver is selling its last bottles online. Below the line, Maverick is counting in years.

I admit I had never looked at where a bottle was filled. I have been doing it since this morning, and the answer bothers me.

In front of the shelf

In front of the shelf this fall, will our hand reach for the bottle filled here, or for the one that only carries our flag?

The barrel has already found its way.

And yet the bottle is still the one thing we can choose.

Above four litres, a barrel. Below, a craft.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• White House — Annex I of the proclamation, banned Canadian alcohol and the four-litre threshold, September 8, 2026
• White House — modification annex, bulk whiskies and liqueurs removed from the 50% duty, September 8, 2026
• Spirits Canada — statement on the U.S. ban and the 93% export share, September 9, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• CBC News — the ban hits small producers and spares multinational bulk, September 29, 2026
• Global News — Maverick Distillery races the midnight deadline, September 28, 2026
• CBS News (Associated Press) — nearly $1 billion in Canadian imports banned, September 29, 2026