New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | May 17, 2005

Pork, wine, and Islam: Always an explosive mix, and even more so when it's the topic list in Reason Express.

Comments

|5.18.05 @ 9:18AM|#

...certainly good news for intra-national "free trade," but don't count the wholesalers out yet. Several states are sure to be blitzed by lobbying efforts aimed at re-writing state laws to comply with the ruling from the Court.

Not quite sure why wholesalers are worried. I work in the retail end, and we had local news affiliates calling us the day the decision went through, asking for interviews...there's no point, because this really won't effect us. Why? Because, wineries often price their wine competitively for direct retail sale; in other words, to keep the price where they want it, they sell it to distributors at price "X" (who then mark it up "Y"%)---at the same time, they sell direct from the winery at roughly X+Y%, to keep a consistent market price.

So, let's say, you can get a bottle for $20 at the local wineshop. You drive to the shop and buy and and drink it. OK. Or, you can pay roughly the same, let's say, $18 for the bottle, from the winery over the internet. You order it. Pay $5, at the very least, for shipping. Then, you sit around and wait for it for a week or two.

So, pay more money and wait 2 weeks, or just buy it at the shop down the street. Hmmm.

Most of the people who are buying online or by phone/mail order are doing so because they cannot get that wine in their homestate. No distributors carry it, or perhaps they want to get on a special mailing list which releases special bottlings. normally unavailable to the public. I've done both of these things myself since VA overturned their ban.

So, the fact is, this isn't gonna really effect the stupid regime of middle-men. I don't understand why their in a tussle. Unless wine ends up like Amazon, and you get free shipping and competitive prices, it's nothing to worry about.

Thomas took the minority view that states can more or less do what they want with regard to alcohol sales and regulation.

That's a rather polite way to phrase it. Another way to put his dissenting opinion is that he claimed that the case had nothing to do with interstate commerce, and that it was actually "about protecting children". Of course, this idiotic opinion completely ignores the facts that, A) what child is going to go through the trouble of getting a credit card, going online, ordering expensive wine, paying for shipping, waiting two weeks, and finding an adult to sign, all just to get a drunk-on? and B) if it were really "about protecting children", the states would have prohibited intrastate shipments as well. That's a far more aggregious than "states can more or less do what they want".

This looks like a possible line of attack in states that do not have much of a wine-making industry to hobble with shipping restrictions.

Anything to preserve the middle-men regimes and tax revenues, eh?

|5.18.05 @ 7:08PM|#

The other day I saw $1.99 wine at Ralphs. We splurged and bought $2.99 wine at Trader Joe's (where all the old hippies work).