I’m just sitting down thinking about things to ‘right’ and the biggest issue on the horizon is a bill that’s coming up which could eradicate the current direct-to-consumer wine shipping laws in the United States. Currently, only a handful of states allow interstate shipping of wine – see map http://www.freethegrapes.org/  Many other states have passed legislation to allow wine shipped into their state if registration fees are paid along with special licensing. In some states it is a FELONY to ship wine in or out. The compliance issues have created new opportunities in the wine industry for new business – Shipping Compliance – which, of course comes with another fee to wineries wanting to ship across state lines. Add this on top of the already highly taxed wine business and you’re starting to get an answer to your question, “why are California wines more expensive than wines from Chile, Australia or Argentina?” But back to the original issue: don’t you want us to be able to ship our Artisan Crafted wine to you wherever you live? Of course you do! Just like Pepperidge Farms can send you a cheese and salami basket for the Holidays or Netflix can send DVD’s. You deserve to have wine sent to you for your tasting pleasure.

I love the short title of this bill: `Comprehensive Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness (CARE) Act of 2010'; another obvious ‘spin’ to win votes. Read more at the following link: The bill. Wholesalers want to maintain control of wine distribution. That’s another obvious statement. They have an interest that has grown through Prohibition era laws into a huge, powerful industry. They lobby your local Congress people by “wining and dining” them along with campaign contributions. It’s been going on for decades! Some of the state laws have not been updated since the 1930’s! And now the wholesalers want the states to grab control through a bill that is being strongly lobbied for approval. A passage of HR 5034 would further hamper if not entirely halt small wineries from shipping wine directly to our consumers and Distributors don’t want to deal with us because of the small allocations available to them. A couple years ago I started the process of selling wine through a distributor in Texas. We paid the import fee to the state – about $350, at the time – and awaited approval. It took so long that the wines I had submitted were sold out, so I re-submitted new wines and wines anticipated to be released and these too were gone by the time the distributor and the state of Texas got together and approved them. Finally, we asked the state to refund our fee. It only took about two weeks to get our check back.

The Wine and Spirits Wholesalers are BUYING our political representatives. Let’s put a stop to that. Let’s put a stop to HR 5034! http://www.StopHR5034.org  Small wineries must be able to ship wine directly to you wherever you are. Without this you will likely be stuck ‘drinking’ wine that has been lobbied into your liquor stores by ‘corporate wineries’. Don’t let politics and big industry keep you from having a choice. You deserve to have small wineries able to ship wine directly to you. Cheers!