CA tied house laws are nuts!

Is anyone here in a position to explain the reason why an employee of a winery may not sell wine under a beer/wine bar license yet winery owners seem to have that right if they own a restaurant.

My daughter, who has a brand new beer/wine bar license, has been prohibited from selling wine because she works at a winery. Doesn’t own it, just works there. Then we read about a winery owner being fined by ABC for selling more than his allowed 15% quota of his own winery’s wine at the restaurants he owns. So HE obviously sells wine there, including his own, but my daughter can’t? Oh, and then we had dinner at The Hitching Post the other night.

It’s now a moot point, since she’s leaving the winery soon to open the bar, but it just seems nonsensical.

The CA retail wine laws are way out of date and reflect the world the way it used to be, not how it is. The right of a winery to sell its wine at a restaurant it owns only exists because Walt Babcock filed a lawsuit against the ABC so he could sell Babcock wine at Walt’s Wharf. Lawsuits are expensive and time consuming.

There has to be dozens of examples of where this might be violated - for instance, I love Farmstead at Long Meadow Ranch in St Helena and they pour many of their own wines. Any restrictions just don’t make sense to me.

We’ll, since CA licenses are location-based, pouring at a restaurant on your own winery property may be how that worked without a legal hassle.

Anyway, my daughter left her job at the winery when the taproom was near ready to open, so the condition was removed and she is happily serving wine.