Alabama’s ABC Board Reverses Ban On Sale Of Pitchers Of Margaritas In Bars

It’s Back To Margaritaville In Jimmy Buffett’s Home State

By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com Nightlife Blogger

You had better grab a margarita for this one.

Or, make it a pitcher of margaritas!

You can do that again if you are in the state of Alabama because the Heart of Dixie’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board (ABC) has reversed its ban on selling pitchers of margaritas in restaurants and bars.

The law only lasted a day, primarily because of this hilarious story from Al.com’s Cameron Smith, who attempted to get a logical explanation of the ban but wound up scratching his head in more confusion. I got the feeling he needed a pitcher of margaritas himself after conducting the interview.

Perhaps an empty pitcher fell on the head of someone on the ABC and knocked some sense into him. The reason for the ban was a doozy – tequila settles to the bottom of the pitcher so each glass poured is not of equal strength. That would be a violation of one of the ABC’s rules.

I would print the rule here but it’s worded in such a way that only someone crazy enough to tell bars they can’t serve drinks in pitchers can understand it.

The only alcoholic beverage that could be legally served in Alabama, as a result, was beer.

Ironically, one could order as many shots at they wanted and add them to glasses of margaritas. So it was not the volume of alcohol that was the “problem” but the uneven distribution of the tequila in a pitcher.

A real irony here is that Alabama is the home state of Jimmy Buffett. Imagine not being able to get a pitcher of frozen concoctions in the state where one of its most famous citizens created a state of mind called Margaritaville.