September is Bourbon Heritage Month.

And this week in Frankfort, state lawmakers heard suggestions from a duo of Kentucky bourbon retailers about changes they'd like to see made to the state's alcohol law, specifically in the market of vintage distilled spirits.

Here's more from Kentucky Edition's Clayton Dalton.

Current state law limits the sale of vintage bottles of alcohol.

Licensed buyers can only purchase 24 bottles per year from a single seller.

State Representative Stephanie Dietz says this presents challenges for legitimate buying operations.

Imagine a Kentucky family has spent decades collecting bourbon.

Perhaps the collection belonged to a parent or grandparent.

When that collection needs to be sold.

The current limits can make it difficult for a licensed Kentucky Vintage spirits business to purchase the collection in its entirety.

This is where House Bill 704 comes in.

The bill would provide an exception for qualified collections of vintage distilled spirits, allowing those collections to be handled outside a certain purchase an annual package maximum.

The legislation would limit the exception to ten qualifying collections in a 12 month period for each licensee or seller.

Shannon Smith is the owner of Revival Vintage Bottle Shop in Covington.

She shared some examples of how the current law limits her ability to do business.

There's a woman out of, New York, and she wanted to quite literally bring us her entire collection.

She just inherited because her parents had passed, and we let her know that we were only able to purchase 24 of her bottles.

Ultimately, what she ended up doing because she needed the money to pay for funeral expenses, outstanding medical bills, those sorts of things we could have purchased it outright, but we didn't.

And instead of even letting us purchase 24 of those bottles, she sold them, frankly, illegally on the secondary market.

And obviously, from our perspective, it's a lost opportunity for business, but also as representatives, it's a loss of taxpayer dollars.

With 95% of the world's bourbon produced in Kentucky.

Representative Dietz said this is about more than just business.

These aren't simply bottles of alcohol.

A vintage bottle can be a piece of Kentucky history.

It can represent a distillery, a production era, a family collection, or a style of whiskey that no longer exists.

And when these bottles are brought into a licensed business, they can become part of our tourism economy and our broader bourbon culture.

The recommendations were part of a 2026 House bill that never made it out of committee.

For Kentucky edition, I'm Clayton Dalton.