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May 16, 2005
Wine Shipping - Lots of Happy Upstate New Yorkers!
If the decision really does allow unfettered wine-by-mail, there will be lots of happy Up Staters. The vineyard owners will be happy. Those of us who live here and would like to mail vinous presents to family and friends will be delighted (that's me). The UPS shipping folks will be thrilled beyond endurance -- I'd bet they'll have to expand the Geneva distribution center.
The Supreme Court has ruled on wine and commerce.
Also read here for detail.
I took the wine course this fall at these Colleges. We share our home in the heart of the Finger Lakes with the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, home of world-class wine scientists who do most of the lecturing for the course. The folks who do the business and marketing end of the course are retired wine scientists who now run their own vienyards (like this one, Billsboro); believe me, these folks are ecstatic -- I'm surprised I can't hear the excited shouts from here.
This following is anecdotal, but the anecdote comes from actual vineyard owners -- most Finger Lakes wine is sold across the counter at winery or consolidated tasting rooms . This means it's an impulse buy. Their long-time dream has been that laws would change so that they could include an order form in the box so that happy customers could buy more. The current patchwork of legal-to-ship-illegal-to-ship jurisdictions is so confusing that UPS more or less refuses to ship because they refuse to accept the liability for being certain that particular addresses are in legal-to-ship jurisdictions.
further -- Professor Bainbridge drizzles on the parade. I will say that the New York wine makers have a model that isn't old-fashioned-prohibitionist-South based -- they say that the liquor distributor interests are the big problem in state legislatures. We'll hope for the best, since I'm hoping to ship to Tennessee . . . ..
Posted by CrankyProfessor at May 16, 2005 1:18 PM