Massachusetts Governor and potential presidential candidate in ’08 Mitt Romney(R)  has vetoed a bill that would have given his state’s residents the opportunity to purchase wine direct from wineries. His reason? He called it "anti-consumer" and simple protection for the state’s wholesalers. And he’s right. As he put it: "This bill does not give wine lovers the opportunity to purchase the bottlings they want. It creates artificial barriers to protect Massachusetts wholesalers at the expense of a free market." The…

Now that’s what I call Progress!! A Federal judge in Pennsylvania has has knocked down the recently instituted change in that state’s shipping laws that removed the right of PA wineries to ship direct to consumers.  On what seemed to many as a decision made on a whim, the Liquor Control Board of PA reacted to their now discriminatory shipping laws by closing down all direct shipping rather than opening up PA to shipping by out-of-state wineries. This is known…

In the never-ending direct shipping wars, the anti-consumer side (wholesalers) has taken up a new strategy to protect their previously legislatively-favored position. In various states, as legislators and consumers wise up to the notion of free trade, wholesalers are attempting to convince lawmakers to allow direct shipping of wine to consumers, but only by smaller wineries. They want to exclude large wineries from shipping direct to consumers. In Massachusetts the wholesalers have suggested and the House is considering a bill…

The past four months has seen more deliberation over the issue of direct shipping than perhaps the entire past decade. All this a result of the Supreme Court’s ruling in May that states can not discriminate between the way in-state and out-of-state wineries are able to sell wine to consumers. Overall, American wine consumers have seen a liberalization in the wine shipping laws. There have been some blips on the radar however with some states considering shutting down all direct…

Here’s a tactic in the Wine Shipping Battles I’ve not come across before. A lawsuit has been filed in Minnesota by The Institute For Justice that is asking that state’s ban on Internet wine sales to be declared an unconstitutional restriction on "Free Speech". "The state should not be in the business of telling people how, and through which medium, they can talk," said Lee McGrath, executive director of the Institute for Justice’s Minneapolis office. This seems like a long…