Archive for the ‘Wine Legal Battles’ Category
Remember that agreement that was brought together last year between the U.S. and E.U. in which a variety of semi generic place names were finally declared off limits? This is the agreement that no longer allows most use of the following names for wine on an American label: BurgundyChablisChampagneChiantiClaretHautSauterneHockMadeiraMalagaMarsala MosellePortRhineSauterneSherryTokay. The idea is that if the wine you’ve made isn’t produced from grapes grown in Chablis, it shouldn’t be called "Chablis". Reasonable. However, I just got word that one of…
The state of Indiana has a new organization that is trying to draw attention to the remarkably anti-competitive and monopolistic laws that wine wholesalers there have bought to protect themselves from having to compete in a free market. The new organization calls itself Vinsense and they are telling it exactly as it is. One of the most telling failures of Indiana’s wholesaler-controlled monopoly on wine sales is spelled out in this simple comment on the Vinsense web page: "The wholesalers…
"I want to be treated like a pornographer – sell on the Internet, sell across state lines, no franchise rules. Anyone over 21 who chooses to buy my product has it available."-Chris Pearmund, Pearmund Cellars Can you imagine? Begging to be treated only as good as a pornographer. That’s what it has come to in Virginia where rather than doing the noble thing and allowing that state’s wineries to operate in a free market, they force them to work within…
I recently received an e-mail from a person who works in the alcohol trade. It was an e-mail in response to this recent post about a scathing account of the Texas Alcohol Regulatory system. The e-mailer didn’t want his name used, but did suggest I consider the following: "The partnership between Government and alcohol distributors works. Distributors deliver huge amounts of cash to politicians and the politicians deliver protection against competition to the distributors. This leads to more powerful distributors…
"The essential definition of corruption in a representative democracy is the usurpation of public authority to the advancement of private interests."HOWARD WOLF Howard Wolf is the public’s representative on the Texas Sunset Commission, a state body gathered together to examine alcohol regulation in Texas. This is a man with no interest at all in anything having to do with the alcohol industry. When he examines the state of alcohol regulation in Texas he comes to the solid conclusion that it…
