Dec 30, 2021
I look back at 2021 and see a year of progress in the wine industry. Granted, this isn’t a difficult position to take if we are comparing this year to 2020. Still, 2021 looks like a year of recovery, and there were positive moves in the regulatory and legal spheres. That said, I wouldn’t want to be accused of being a pollyanna. There are things going on in wine in 2021 that were not so great. These are the worst…
Jan 19, 2021
If you were to ask how the recent catastrophe at the U.S. Capitol implicated the alcohol industry, you’d be hard-pressed to find that connection. Ideologically, alcohol is a pretty non-partisan affair. So, it was very interesting to see one of America’s most prominent alcohol trade associations, the National Beer Wholesalers of America (NBWA), connected to the fallout from the storming of the Capitol. Media reports on the political fallout of the storming of the Capitol have in part focused on…
Dec 15, 2020
One of the fundamental principles of thievery (as it has been explained to me) is the value per pound of the item to be stolen. The greater this ratio, the more complex the thriving operation: heavy things are hard to move while lighter things are more easily spirited away. This explains why identity theft is so attractive. The object of the theft is without weight. This calculation, however, has always called into question for me the reasonableness of stealing wine,…
Aug 3, 2020
I recently had the opportunity to provide one half of dueling opinion pieces in the Columbus Dispatch. The issue was, “Should Ohio Restrict Online Sales of Spirits and Wine”. The reason for the dueling op-eds was as a response to the Ohio Attorney General’s claim that out-of-state wine retailers illegally shipped into the state and his filing for an injunction against those retailers in Federal Court. My Op-Ed is here. The gentlemen providing all the reasons why Ohio consumers should…
Jan 5, 2020
I don’t like anonymous comments on this blog. I like anonymous emails even less. It strikes me as cowardly and suggests the person commenting/emailing doesn’t possess the courage of their convictions. It’s also a huge factor that leads to the divisiveness that plagues conversations on the Internet. That said, I’m compelled to (once again) published another anonymous G’email that would have carried (a tiny bit) more weight had it been placed in the comment section of this blog with a…