Archive for the ‘Shipping Wine’ Category
House Bill 402 has been moving through the Montana Legislature with relatively little opposition, giving us hope that this half-measure direct shipping bill will see the light of day on the floor and pass into law in 2013. The opposition to the bill has been from the usual suspects: Wholesalers. Their argument in opposition to the bill falls into two general categories: 1. The Current “Connoisseurs License” which put the onus of complying with regulations and remitting taxes on the…
For a moment there, wine lovers in Maryland and wineries across the country thought that the state of Maryland had begun the process of getting its act together where wine shipping was concerned. Maryland wine lovers and wineries across the country thought Maryland had finally come to its free market senses and started the process of opening its borders to real access to wine. Now it appears they are backsliding and in a particularly pernicious way. Senate Bill 990 (authored…
For a few days now I’ve been staring at this study of “Concentration in the U.S. Wine Industry”. It has a spiffy graphic that I like. And I learned that three large wine companies with multiple brands account for 50% of all wine sales in the U.S. The point of the study comes down to the question the authors pose and attempt to answer: “What impact does this industry concentration have on consumer choices?” The problem is the question is…
Seventeen states ban the sale of wine in grocery stores. Seventeen. The question this brings to mind is this: Is this policy of prohibiting consumers from purchasing a Pinot when they purchase their pork loin justifiable? I’ve been pondering this as at least four states gear up to look at their wine-in-grocery store policy in 2013: Kansas, Kentucky, New York, and Tennessee. What’s fascinating is that this debate never happens over the issue of “is the current policy justifiable”. Do…
Press releases are interesting tools. They are, even within the wine industry, almost in every case a matter self-aggrandizement. One rarely sees a company issue a release informing the media that “XYZ Winery Sales Suck” or “Administrative Chaos Reigns at XYZ Wine Company”. Rather, press releases are almost always issued to point the media and readers to a virtual smiley face the company issuing the press release has drawn. What follows is a tale of one such smiley face and…
