Archive for the ‘Wine Legal Battles’ Category
Minors Don't Buy Alcohol On-line. And yet, this fundamental fact has gone unnoticed in the wake of a recently released study that looks at minors access to alcohol conducted by Chapel Hill North Carolina and funded by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation. While this study shows that 8 students attempting to buy wine from 100 unknown on-line vendors demonstrated that 48 out of 100 orders were delivered, the study itself and the media coverage that has followed somehow failed to mentioned…
Yesterday, the Wine & Spirit Wholesalers of America (WSWA) explained that while they DID oppose it with millions of dollars and while they ARE financing a lawsuit to stop the law from taking effect, they are in fact NEUTRAL on privatizing alcohol distribution and sales in Washington State…and elsewhere. The occasion for this oddly dichotomous position that is probably lost on no one, was an annual WSWA press conference held in Washington, DC yesterday that was purported to address "The…
Consider this scenario: 1. Wineries are required to sell their wines exclusively to wholesalers 2. Wholesalers are not required to distribute the wineries' wines 3. Wholesalers won't represent and distribute the wineries' wines. We are talking here about Alabama. The ten wineries in that state asked for a simple exemption from this absurd scenario: "Allow us to sell our own wines to restaurants and retailers, please, since wholesalers won't and they represent the only way we can get our wines…
I note with some interest that among the American alcohol wholesaling community there is a great deal of talk about the need to unite the the various sectors of the alcohol beverage industry to advance a common political agenda. There was a great deal of call for common agendas at last week's Wine & Spirit Wholesalers Association of Ameirca Annual Convention. The new Chairman of WSWA, Charmer Sunbelt CEO Charlie Merinoff, put it like this in addressing last week's convention…
The Wine & Spirit Wholesalers of America, the national association representing American wine wholesalers, finished their annual convention in Las Vegas on Friday with their CEO Craig Wolf warning members that the challenge of "privatization" “is being used as a "stalking horse" for deregulation of the industry. His prescription for facing this "challenge"? "These challenges accentuate the need for the industry to work together. All three tiers must collaborate to protect the reliability, safety and integrity of the products they…
