Archive for the ‘Shipping Wine’ Category
There is a simple way of determining in the wine industry and any other industry or situations, who your opponents are: Line up potential opponents and ask them what they oppose. It’s direct, simple and lacks provocation. Recently, the only national association of wine and spirit wholesalers provided a list of those things they oppose, making it a simple chore to determine if wine and spirit wholesalers are your opponents/enemy. At the recently concluded Wine & Spirit Wholesalers of…
The American system of alcohol regulations is not merely broken, it has become a parody of the idea of control. What once was supposed to be a post-Prohibition system of regulations to assure the country did not fall back into a free-for-all alcohol market has morphed over the years into a chaotic collection of regulations and laws based on the what the highest bidder wants, on the principle of rent-seeking by the most powerful and politically connected entities in the…
What is Wine Freedom? It is the principle that a free people ought to be free to procure the wine they want from any legal source willing to sell it to them. It’s a simple idea. And yet, the idea is opposed by many in, of all places, the wine industry. In fact, the idea that there needed to be something called WineFreedom.org should be offensive to anyone who believes it is offensive to restrict free trade, free commerce, and…
“We can’t support that bill and it doesn’t matter that it’s a good bill for our members. If we do, the wholesalers will kill all the bills we are looking to pass this year.” This response, from the head of a wine industry association, is not unique. That is to say, I’ve heard it said before; every year I hear it said; it gets blurted out by wine industry associations of all types in many states. The middlemen box-movers of…
Sometimes, out of nowhere, a lawmaker in a state does something audacious and profoundly beneficial to the consumers. That’s happened in Texas. A Texas lawmaker named Matt Rinaldi has authored a bill (HB 2291) that completely reforms the laws for the direct shipment of wine to consumers in that state. Currently, Texas retailers, Texas Wineries, and out-of-state wineries may ship wine to Texans. However, Texans are forbidden by law from having wine shipped to them from out-of-state retailers and wine…
