AnuvaBlog

To echo again, what the Eerie Times News (a local Pennsylvania paper) says about direct shipping of alcohol as it pertains to Pennsylvanians (and by default all Americans)… Enough already!!

Why can’t people just buy the alcohol they want and not deal with Liquor Control Boards, middlemen, bureaucracy and unwarranted price hikes?

I’m glad that winebusiness.com is regularly putting articles like this among its headlines as this has to be one of the most important issues effecting alcohol trade today.

I don’t understand why state and federal entities that control the alcohol trade see direct to consumer shipping as something that is somehow different from regular retail/wholesale sales. People are still drinking the wine. People can still buy as much as they want whenever they want. It’s just that people now can only get limited types of spirited beverages, either locally made or made by massive producers that can pay to have their product go through “the system” in order to stock shelves.

It is perhaps the working of wholesalers, other middlemen, and larger alcohol companies that is preventing more direct shipping. They seem to be the only ones who THINK they have something to lose.

In response to dear Alder’s post on interstate shipping laws in the US and alcohol advertising laws in France (May the 24th, 2008 on Vinography), my own rant on this subject is long overdue…

My comments shall remain focused on Alder’s initial comments in his post regarding new laws in Illinois that prevent direct to consumer shipping from out of state merchants. The key phrase as was reported by Yahoo! News is that laws like this “protect… alcohol wholesalers from competition.”

My question is how is this not a blatant violation of anti-trust law?

But more than just fussing about how this is a violation of law, is it not even more important to think about how this effects consumers? Education of consumers? How this inflates prices to consumers? How this limits their choices? How this prevents free and fair trade?

Let us look at the facts: preventing shipping of wine through geography is in no way beneficial to consumers. It limits their choices, it increases their costs, and it indirectly puts pressure on producers that would be able to sell in new markets through direct shipping to sell their product elsewhere.

The only, solitary, stand alone beneficiary to preventing interstate shipping are wholesalers/distributors. They get to maintain their stranglehold on supply channels and keep their margins.

So for those of you who live in Washington, Illinois, Texas, Maryland and a slew of other states in the US, please write to your congressmen and senators and get these laws changed. This will only serve you, as the wine consuming public and allow you to enjoy more wine from more regions from around the globe at lower prices.