You knew it was only a matter of time before a protected industry decided to fight back against the forces of goodness and light. What interests me is that apparently, Florida wineries are joining the state’s idiot liquor distributors who don’t distribute their wines in the first place.
This article from the St. Pete Times only brushes the surface, of course. The three options given are wildly different and wouldn’t really attract both winemakers and distributors. More on this vitally important topic after the jump.
Option one, ban all wineries from shipping wine in state, including in-state wineries, seems counterintuitive if you’re one of the in-state wineries. Currently, they can ship direct to consumers. Few of Florida’s wineries produce enough to sell through any of the state’s liquor distributors. But many of them do make sales over the internet to Florida consumers. Why would they care to give up that portion of their business to please distributors who don’t do anything for them in the first place?
Wine is not a standard commodity. Each winery produces an entirely unique product from every other winery. No wine aficionado would claim that all chardonnays are the same, for example. So a Florida wine drinker who orders wine from, say, San Sebastian Winery in St. Augustine, would not necessarily stop ordering from there just because now he can order from California or Texas. San Sebastian produces the best cream sherry in the world (in my not-at-all-humble opinion) and unique Florida muscadine wines that are not reproduced by any other winery. So now that I can order wines from, say, Val Verde Winery in Del Rio, Texas, and perhaps I will (they have a very good and hard-to-get Sangiovese), does that mean I’m going to stop ordering cream sherry from San Sebastian? Hardly. One wine does not replace another. Since Florida wineries are selling irreplaceable commodities, I wouldn’t think they’d be too scared of out of state wineries shipping directly to Florida consumers. Certainly not so scared that they should want to ban themselves from shipping in state.
Option three, limit buyers to four cases a year from out of state, fails the constitutional test that prompted this whole debate in the first place. Would this also limit buyers to four cases a year from in state? It would have to. What interest do wineries have in putting limits on their own sales? It seems to me that the liquor distributors, who in this state amount to a cartel almost as powerful as Disney, have cowed the wineries into signing on to proposals that, ultimately, won’t help the wineries at all. I wonder if the distributors mentioned that they wouldn’t carry any state wines from wineries that didn’t support their legislative package? Hmm. I need to investigate this matter more thoroughly.
Option two is not awful. It is the only one of the three that does not involve the state’s wineries placing limits on their own sales; as such, I suspect it’s the only one wineries would actually support were they not being threatened.
Lobbyist and former House Speaker Don Tucker (why is it no surprise a former house speaker is now a lobbyist?) is lying through his teeth when he says he wants to pass a law to “make everyone happy.” He wants to pass a law that allows his employer, a liquor distributor, to maintain its current monopoly on wine sales in Florida. Why the hell else are they employing him? There is a very good chance Southern and its pals will win this battle and ban all wine shipments; you can bet they didn’t hire anybody who just wants to make people happy.
I hope all Florida wine drinkers would do their part and write emails or letters or make phone calls to their state legislators. My suggestion, take a lesson from other states that allow out-of-state shipping. Require shippers—either FedEx, UPS, or DHL—to get a signature from an dividual presenting proof of age before delivery. Then enact a reciprocal provision, which numerous other states do: reciprocal states allow wineries in other reciprocal states to ship, but not from non-reciprocal states. About 20 states have such a provision, including California, Oregon, and Texas.
The best of the options given in the article is the second, which may be the best we can hope for. It prevents the biggest wineries from shipping directly, but allows smaller ones to do so. This will satisfy the liquor distributors, who only distribute wine from big wineries in the first place, while still permitting wine drinkers to order from small wineries out of state with unique wines they can’t get elsewhere. The only question is whether that would satisfy the reciprocal requirement from other states. That would be up to other states to determine, and I suspect that California in particular (home of many large wineries) would be disinclined to call it a fair bargain. (Note that this puts us back at square one, but without the hope of a court case to change the law.)
This is one of the developing stories you can bet I’ll follow. Wine, after all, makes other people interesting. And you can never have enough of that.
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