The Chicago Tribune Agrees!

Gretchen Neuman

VinoVerve, Editor

Imagine my suprise when I say this headline from a Chicago Tribune editorial:

End the wine war

I admit that I felt pretty good about that. It speaks to the utter logic of the working being carried out by the Illinois Wine Consumer Coalition. Consumers in Illinois should be entitled to purchase wine from wineries and retailers both in and out of the state. Why? Basic fairness and a little something that we call additional revenue into state coffers. On a day when the new governor of Illinois is starting his campaign to increase the income tax rate paid by Illinois citizens, doesn’t it just make sense to try to maximize the revenues collected from other sources?

Anyway, here is what the Trib had to say on the issue:

End the wine war

March 11, 2009

A 2005 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state laws that barred out-of-state wineries from shipping directly to customers in-state. This decision was supposed to end what Justice Anthony Kennedy called “an ongoing, low-level trade war.”

It did nothing of the sort—at least not in Illinois. State lawmakers just traded one misguided protectionism for another. Oenophiles (OK, it means wine connoisseurs) gained the right to purchase wine directly from out-of-state wineries. But Illinois lawmakers in 2007 took away their right to order directly from out-of-state retail wine shops—something state residents had been able to do legally for 16 years.

If you’re a Bud man, this might not mean much to you, but it should. The legislature was trying to straitjacket your power as a consumer so it could protect in-state sellers and distributors from price competition.

Bottom line: Your lawmakers wanted you to pay more.

State Rep. Julie Hamos (D-Evanston) is trying to reverse this boneheaded law. She faces an uphill battle. She has a bill to restore the right to purchase wine from out-of-state retail merchants. You can buy just about anything from anywhere—books, TVs, clothes, the entire Vermont Country Store catalog. But you can’t buy wine from a wine shop in, say, California.

Hamos’ common-sense bill would give consumers more choice, lower prices and allow Illinois to collect sales taxes on out-of-state wine purchases. It would finally put an end to Illinois’ wine protectionism.

The bill is likely to be heard Wednesday in a House committee. Illinois wine distributors are working overtime to kill it.

Since the end of Prohibition, the distributors have enjoyed a lucrative position as the middlemen in alcohol sales. A three-tier system of producers, distributors and retailers has driven up costs, limited the reach of smaller wineries and narrowed choice in the marketplace.

It’s a system that wine critic Robert Parker, publisher of “The Wine Advocate” newsletter, has called “absurdly inefficient.”

But it’s a system that has made distributors a lot of money. Distributors are loath to allowcompetition that would break their stranglehold on the wine market. And many lawmakers are loath to defy the wine distributors, because, well, you know why. They drink the nectar of the lobbyists.

Opponents of the Hamos bill claim that it would allow minors to buy wine over the Internet. That’s a specious argument. Minors who want to drink don’t seek out specialty wines from faraway merchants.

“It’s really about consumer choice. They just want the best product for the best price,” Hamos said. “That is what we should be encouraging for consumers, not restricting their choices.”

We can raise a glass to that.

Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune

What can you do to further the cause?

Join the Illinois Wine Consumer Coalition and email and call your state representatives and ask them to support HB2462.

Tags: Chicago Tribune, editorial, HB 2462, Illinois Wine Consumer Coalition, IWCC

This entry was posted on March 16, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Wine Access. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.