CT May Get Wine Shipping Right
The state of Connecticut has announced it will be formulating new legislation in response to the Supreme Court’s decision on wine shipping that takes into account the issue of minors access, free trade as well as the State’s own family-owned wineries.
This is the kind of measured, thoughtful response that you would expect any chief executive of a state to take when there are a number of different interests involved and it points to the glaring lack of imagination that Nida Samona, Chair of the Michigan Liquor Control Commission, showed when she immediately announced she would push for a ban on all shipping, essentially kicking her state’s very impressive wine industry straight in the teeth.
The Connecticut legislation has not been drafted yet. However, prior to the Supreme Court Decision SB 122 was flying through the legislature and addressed this very issue. The approach it took was to allow a winery or retailer outside of CT to ship up to 24 bottles of wines per month. However, the law as proposed demands that the wine be shipped directly to a retailer, where it is then picked up (or delivered?) to the consumer who ordered the wine.
This is a very unwieldy way of getting a wine directly to a consumer. However, it is direct shipping of a sort and it doesn’t deem necessary that the wine goes first through a wholesaler before it gets to the retailer where the consumer then retrieves the wine it ordered.
However, keep in mind, the legislation referred to in this announcement today may not be the same as is in SB122.
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