State Law

Taking Wine Home From Connecticut Restaurants

By Ryan

 Have you ever ordered a bottle of wine in a restaurant, enjoyed it, but did not finish it with your meal?

In Connecticut, you can ask your server to put more than just your meal in your “doggie bag.”  By statute a restaurant patron is allowed to remove one unsealed bottle of wine for off-premises consumption so long as the patron has purchased the wine with a full course meal and has consumed part of the meal.

Here is the statute, complete with the definition of a full course meal (you’ll see that chex mix in a bar does not count):

A restaurant patron shall be allowed to remove one unsealed bottle of wine for off-premises consumption provided the patron has purchased such bottle of wine at such restaurant and has purchased a full course meal at such restaurant and consumed a portion of the bottle of wine with such meal on such restaurant premises. For the purposes of this section, “full course meal” means a diversified selection of food which ordinarily cannot be consumed without the use of tableware and which cannot be conveniently consumed while standing or walking. Conn. Gen. Stat. Sec. 30-22

Cheers!

Full post as published by A Connecticut Law Blog on February 17, 2008 (boomark / email).