Mead if you can, wine if you must!
From
www.freethegrapes.org:
National Toast Scheduled Tonight to Celebrate Supreme Court Justices’ Support for Wine Direct Shipping
May 16, 2005 – Free the Grapes!, a national coalition of more than 300,000 wine lovers and 2,000 wineries seeking to ensure access to wine, has scheduled a national toast this evening to celebrate the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of interstate, direct-to-consumer wine shipping. (
www.freethegrapes.org).
“Raise a glass at dinner tonight and toast the wisdom of the Supreme Court’s ruling,” asked Jeremy Benson, executive director of Free the Grapes! “We’re asking everyone who loves wine to participate—consumers, winemakers, retailers, restaurateurs, brokers and even wholesalers. There are no losers today. Today’s historic ruling will benefit each tier of the wine industry,” he added.
Despite the ruling, the grapes are not immediately free. The next step is for affected states to pass the existing model direct shipping bill, which is operating successfully in a number of states and was recommended for adoption by the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Task Force on the Wine Industry, in 1997.
“Discriminatory laws won’t change overnight. We need our Free the Grapes! members now, more than ever, to write their legislators in support of legal, regulated direct shipping that was endorsed today by the Supreme Court,” Benson added. The Free the Grapes! website allows consumers to personalize and automatically send messages to their state legislators. The wine industry’s public policy trade associations, including Wine Institute, WineAmerica and Family Winemakers of California, will now work with legislators in the affect states.
A wine war pits wine consumers—who want to purchase wine directly from wineries—against the $32 billion dollar wholesaler cartel, who want all purchases to flow through them. The wholesaler middlemen have aggressively supported legislation creating state-sanctioned monopolies in wine distribution in many states, triggering lawsuits, a thorough study by the Federal Trade Commission, and consumer outrage.
The ruling is widely interpreted as a boon for wine consumers. In its July 2003 report, the FTC characterized state shipping bans as “…the single largest regulatory barrier to expanded e-commerce in wine,” and that they “prevent consumers from saving as much as 21 percent on some wines and from conveniently purchasing many popular wines from suppliers around the country.”