Want to Age Your Whiskey in Space? State Considers Offering Distilleries Tax Breaks For Aging Booze in the Cosmos

North Carolina may soon tax space-aged whiskey at a flat rate instead of charging thousands of dollars. This is part of Senate Bill 527. (Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP)

One small booze tax break, one giant step for North Carolina’s liquor laws and … space whiskey? Yes, it’s true, a bill re-tuning North Carolina’s ABC laws was proposed in late June. This bill brought up potential Sunday liquor sales, happy hours and impending tax breaks to any distillers looking to age their whiskey in space, according to local news outlet WRAL News.

North Carolina is known for having some of the strictest alcohol legislation in the country.

Prior to early 2023, the state had banned happy hours, bottomless mimosas and Sunday liquor sales. Senate Bill 527 aims to give local governments the ability to open ABC stores at 10 a.m. on Sundays and keep them open on holidays except Christmas and Thanksgiving. The bill seeks to allow restaurants to sell mixed drinks to-go and for delivery as long as food is purchased alongside them.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the bill is a portion that is reworking liquor taxes for a company based out of Durham, Mystic Farm and Distillery, which is working on a space-aged bourbon: Mystic Galactic Bourbon.

With the new tax breaks, space-aged whiskey would be taxed at a simple flat rate instead of being taxed thousands of dollars according to WSOC-TV.

Mystic Galactic Whiskey is priced at $75,000 a bottle, and the additional North Carolina sales tax would add 7%. That pricing adds an increase of $5,250 to the already hefty price tag, in addition to any additional excise taxes the distiller may pass on to the consumer. If this Senate Bill 527 passes, Mystic Galactic Whiskey will be taxed at a flat rate.

The company is working on a distinctive aging process that takes four years in total. Barrels of the spirit are aged for the first three years on Earth, at which point they will be launched into space for one year of “orbital aging,” according to Mystic Galactic Bourbon.

In a video segment on In Depth with Dan Haggerty at North Carolina’s local news outlet, WRAL News, Haggerty said the distillery told him if the bill doesn’t pass, they may move the project outside of North Carolina.

“If it works, they want to send a batch around the moon in 2030,” Haggerty said in the video.

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