State-by-state report on 'wine friendliness'

WINE TALK
21

Tom, in dc there are two kinds of liquor licenses available to retailers. A class “a” license permits the sale of beer, wine, and liquor but not on sundays and not after 8:30 or 9 pm. A class “b” license permits sunday sales (i think only after noon) but such a retailer may not sell liquor. As a practical matter, the latter are held by grocery stores, which typically have poor selection (exception rodman’s and the late and missed bread and circus, which is now the georgetown whole foods and is where i bought 96 truchot, 93 chevillon, and louis/dressnerr wines).

22

+1

23

Interesting, it says that retailer to consumer shipping is prohibited. Now, that’s a real knee slapper…

[bullshit.gif]

24

I’ve lived in NY for 30 years. Never had a problem having wine shipped to me by retailers anywhere in the US except if their state doesn’t allow it, e.g. MA and FL. If there’s a law against it, I’ve never heard of it, which doesn’t seem possible given how much of a fuss was made about winery shipping over the years (until that law was finally clarified).

So the only negative for NY is no sale of wine in grocery stores, and I’m not sure that is even a negative since there is a liquor store next to just about every grocery store.

25

Texas is not entirely correct. BYOB or corkage is allowed but only under one condition. If a restaurant has a full liquor license, it is forbidden. If the restaurant has what is called a “beer and wine” license, then it is permitted. Since Liquor licenses outnumber their beer and wine counterparts at restaurants where a good bottle is appropriate by over 100 to 1, the evaluation is misleading. I have one restaurant within five miles of my house (a tiny Thai place) that allows BYOB and the next closest I know of is 11 miles away. Within that radius would be 200-250 restaurants.

26

Ken,
Not only does NY law prohibit the shipment of wine into the State from out of state retailers, but when the law was challenged as an unconstitutional form of discrimination that violated the Commerce Clause, the second Circuit Federal Court of appeals upheld the ban on the grounds that out of state retailer shipping would be an frontal assault on the three tier system. The case was Arnold v. Boyle.

27

Have you ever heard of an enforcement of this law? Why do FedEx and UPS deliver here from out of state? Many of the UPS and all of the FedEx shipments I get are labeled as alcohol.

28

Ken,

Some states don’t enforce or don’t have the resources to enforce it. I know retailers that ship anywhere, including felony states, even though they have received a cease and desist notice. They will do it until prosecuted because its worth it to them. When Texas went on the offensive under their current Govenor, we stopped shipping there and some of our best customers were in Texas.

29

Dear Wine Berserkers,

Just looking for any comments on the August ‘report card’ report from American Wine Consumer Coalition, which gave an F grade to 12 states… but also a few A+s - to Washington D.C. and to California among six states.

Anyone from, say, Pennsylvania (F), care to comment?

Cheers,
Panos

30

I thought the grading was pretty bad. One of the big negatives seems to have been that certain states like NJ do not allow wine to be sold in grocery stores. Who cares? There’s enough wine stores in NJ that you don’t need that. Plus stores like Fairway, Shop-Rite, Wegmans, Kings have a wine store connected to their grocery store. Nothing in the report that mentions that.

Also the report says that in NJ there is a prohibition on allowing direct to consumer shipments from wine retailers. If that is 100% true then I can personally vouch that I know a dozen or so retailers that are breaking the law. I do not think that these retailers would break the law.

NJ got a D+ even though we are a great BYO state, can get wine shipped from wineries and retailers, allow sales on Sunday, get around the no sales in grocery stores in quite a few cases and not to mention we have a very good selection of top wines from some of the best retailers in the country.

So based on this I did not bother to look at the other states scorecard as I think the report on NJ is flimsy at best.

31

You will find many here:

32

Thanks Ken… and thank you Paul for replying.
Will now look at the original thread!

33

Nevertheless, it is indeed illegal…

34

It’s not my intent to break the law, far from it. I even use my turn signals. [snort.gif] I wasn’t aware of the retail law and all the websites I use allow CO shipments, so why even have a law on the books that no one seems to even be aware of, let alone enforce? newhere

35

My understanding of the CO law (I am not ITB nor a laywer) is that a very small amt can be shipped legally from an out of state retailer. But it is a very small amount that I forget. This was from a distributor who knows the law better than I do. I also recall that the above may have been a liberal interpretation of the current law. Wheather it is enforced or not is a compltely different issue of course.

36

Perhaps (I am not a lawyer), the reason these laws like in CO and NY are not enforced is because the “crime” is being committed by the out of state retailer over which the receiving state has no jurisdiction?

37

Should merge then.

38

Is the governor of California going to sign an extradition warrant sending the owner of (for example) Premier Cru to New York to stand trial? I think not.

39

It would seem to be in the best interest of all concerned to stop talking about all the places that you can get wine shipped where it might not be entirely legal.

40

Aren’t we all anonymous and invisible on the internet?

newhere