Jun 21, 2006
Just something to consider…. I was talking with a journalist in Colorado today who receives a lot of wine shipments to his home…every day. He disclosed to me that in a very consistent way wines delivered by UPS are about 15 degrees warmer than wines delivered by FED EX. How does he know this? He measures the temperatures of the outside of the boxes when they arrive at his home with a laser temperature guage. He says the difference in…
Jun 1, 2006
Arizonans got their new wine shipping law today when their governor signed a bill that is a near perfect representation of the type of legislation being considered in one from or another across the country. The new Arizona wine shipping law allows any winery in Arizona or elsewhere to ship directly to both residents or retailers in the state with the caveat that the winery doing the shipping produces less than 20,000 gallons per year. This is the equivalent of…
May 30, 2006
If you are a wine blog reader you’ve probably noticed that most of what’s being written in the wine blog world is mostly produced by wine lover, rather than wine insiders, let alone wine insiders of any heft. We have few blogs that are written by wine writing pros and some winemaker blogs. So it’s nice to see an insider with great heft contributing to a blog. The heftyman is Corbin Houchins. Corbin is one of America’s leading wine lawyers….
May 24, 2006
In the course of reconciling it’s wine shipping laws with last year’s equality-imposing Supreme Court decision, the state of Vermont has done something very interesting. A new law (S58) signed this month says both in-state and out-of-state wineries may now sell and ship wine directly to retail shops and restaurants, effectively cutting the middle man wholesaler out of the loop. This, in and of itself, is a pretty dramatic step given the stranglehold wholesalers seem to have over the legislative…
May 16, 2006
a Press Democrat writes a very nice round up story today on the state of direct shipment of wine a year after the historic Granholm V. Heald Supreme Court decision. What caught my eye was the very end of the story where the President of the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers Association, Juanita Duggan, identified with this quote:"the justices’ opinion that states could find other ways to enforce underage drinking laws in an era of direct shipping of wine doesn’t sway…