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Howard W. Hewitt

~ … The "W" stands for wine!

Howard W. Hewitt

Tag Archives: wine laws

Ind. legislature and silly wine restrictions

14 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by Howard in Indiana, Uncategorized

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HB 1422, IBJ, Indiana legislature and alcohol, wine and golf, wine laws

Every time I read about proposed laws relating to alcohol in Indiana I come away shaking my head in amazement at the stupidity and greed.

There are at least two bills in the legislature getting some consideration that might help. I’m posting the links here so you can share in my frustration and amazement.

House Bill 1422 – From the Indiana Business Journal story: “one barrier for wineries and distilleries that include restaurants is that they are not allowed to take alcohol produced on their properties directly to their restaurants. Instead, they have to sell it to a distributor, the distributor has to take it to a warehouse and then return it and sell it back to the winery or distillery. Then the product can be sold in the restaurant.”

You might want to read that again to fully understand the greed written into Indiana law. Read the entire IBJ story here.

Then there is this one – a bill allowing wine sales on golf courses. If you’re a golfer you’ve seen the beverage carts on the links. The carts always feature cold beer and many include wine, illegally. Damn them!

A proposal to allow wine sales on the links passed the Indiana house just a week or so ago 92-4. You can read the short Associated Press story here.

You can’t make this stuff up if you tried. Geez!

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Legislature Could Boost Wine Sales

30 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by Howard in Indiana, Newspaper Column 2015

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direct shipping, Indiana legislature, Jim Butler, Ted Huber, wine laws

UPDATE: The bill passed the Indiana Senate this week, 40-10, and now goes to the House. I’ll have an update this coming week on the bill’s status. I’ve also learned of some controversy of an increase in the licensing fee – $100 to $500 for Indiana wineries if bill passes.

Wine enthusiasts have read about the great wines of Huber, Butler, Oliver, and Turtle Run wineries in Southern Indiana. But what if you’re reading Grape Sense in Marion or Peru Indiana? You just can’t pick up the phone and order some wine to try these great bottles. It’s prohibited by state law. And let’s admit, it’s a long drive.

Grape Sense LogoThere is seldom good news in Indiana on direct shipping laws but there is hope in the ongoing session of the Indiana legislature. Current law, in place since 2006, requires consumers to visit on site and make a face-to-face purchase before they can order online. It hurt Indiana wineries significantly when enacted and winery owners are excited it could disappear.

Such statutes used to be fairly common across the country but are now disappearing. Indiana Senate Bill 113, introduced by Crawfordsville Senator Phil Boots, would require customers to provide name, address, phone number and proof of age but remove the onsite restriction.

The good news is the bill passed out of the Senate Public Policy Committee, 9-0. But Jim Butler, who often is involved on behalf of Indiana wineries on governance matters, knows there is still a long way to go.

Jim Butler

Jim Butler

“It’s a great start, but the session is never over until the last hour of the last day, and as you know adult beverage legislation is always a labyrinth,” said Butler, who owns a winery near Bloomington. “Back in 2006 we lost the shipping rights that we had had for over 30 years and as a result we lost about 90 percent of our shipping business and have never really regained it.  This bill will be a great help to our customers as well as us as a business.”

So any Hoosier who supports free commerce should support the bill. You need to encourage those ‘pro-business legislators’ to support Senate Bill 113.

Besides killing profit, the 2006 change created more bureaucracy for Indiana wineries, which already are burdened with regulations and mounds of paper work.

Huber, Ted

Ted Huber

Ted Huber, one of the state’s biggest producers and most-visited wineries, said the current system has been a mess. “Obviously, this type of tracking is cumbersome and complicated,” he said. “It is hard for Huber’s to track Indiana customers among the other visitors that we have traveling through from other states.

“This process becomes frustrating to our Indiana guests as they often leave our tasting room and forget to sign the affidavit.” Huber’s welcomes more than 500,000 annually.

The usual suspects have lined up against the change with tired arguments which have never been proven to have merit. The Indiana Beverage Alliance represents retailers and wholesalers and doesn’t want to lose any business. While that’s understandable, don’t we all support a free marketplace?

“There are lots of Pinot Noirs on the shelf at Indiana retailers,” said Marc Carmichael on behalf of the Alliance. Sure there are lots of choices on those shelves. But Indiana wines take up a tiny portion of the inventory of most retail outlets. If you want to drink Indiana wine, shouldn’t you be able to buy it conveniently?

You can bet the underage-drinking crowd will chime in with their hysterics. Such organizations do an important and great job educating young people about alcohol. That argument gets most of us who support direct shipping de-regulation the most riled up. There is no documented evidence this has ever happened – any where!

Today’s column is a call to action, winos! Contact your local legislator and ask them to support Senate Bill 113 and to change this terrible anti-business law.

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Wine Consumers Give Indiana an F

20 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by Howard in Indiana, Newspaper Column 2013

≈ 1 Comment

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American Wine Consumer Coalition, direct shipping, wine laws

Anyone who has tried to buy wine at a winery, take a special bottle to a restaurant or buy wine on a Sunday knows Indiana’s laws are confusing and restrictive.

Grape Sense LogoNeighboring states aren’t much better off. Indiana and Kentucky prevent direct winery to consumer shipping while Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio allow it. All four of those states allow Sunday sales while Indiana does not. The American Wine Consumer Coalition, Washington D.C. issued a report and grade for all 50 states. It’s called Consuming Concerns: The 2013 State-by-State Report Card on Consumer Access to wine. The forward in the report bemoans the existence of laws ‘from the 1930s” that are still ‘in place in most states, despite a cultural, economic and commercial reality that is starkly different (today).’

David Honig, a wine writer, publisher of one of the country’s biggest online wine magazine – Palate Press – and attorney, says the laws make no sense unless viewed through the lens of distributor protection. “A wine lover can have their favorite bottled shipped to them, but only if (a) they’ve been to the vineyard or winery in person, and (b) left a copy of their Indiana Driver’s License, and (c) the winery has an Indiana shipping license, and (d) only if the winery does not have a distributor in the state,” Honig said.

Palate Press Publisher David Honig

Palate Press Publisher David Honig

“These laws don’t protect minors from their plans to set aside the usual adolescent need for instant gratification to order an expensive vintage for delivery in a week or two. Nor do they protect Hoosiers from bathtub gin or other adulterated hooch. They don’t even keep the streets, playgrounds, and schoolyards safe from Hillside Select swilling bums, hiding their $250 bottles in plain brown bags. They protect distributors, the top tier in the three-tier system, from suffering the indignity of seeing somebody enjoy a bottle of wine without getting a cut.”

By now you may have guessed, Indiana got an F and so did Kentucky. Michigan and Ohio came in with D grades while Illinois scored highest in the Midwest with a C.

The scoring standards were: winery to consumer shipping; retailer to consumer shipping; grocery store wine sales, Sunday wine sales, and bring your own bottle to restaurants laws.

Who scored near the top? Not surprisingly, California led the list followed by Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oregon, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Indiana is joined by 11 other states on the stinkers list including Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Utah.

The hodgepodge of laws is largely the embarrassing work of state legislatures. In Indiana, the distributors’ lobby has controlled, or owned, our voting representatives. I’ve heard more than one distributor say there is little problem with allowing direct shipping because that is such a small portion of the wine-buying market. The hypocrisy is extraordinary even for state legislators. Write the representative in your state. The laws are ridiculous.

Consumers can buy almost anything through the mail and have it shipped to their doorstep – clothing, books, medicine, furniture, even pornography. This has nothing to do with under-age drinking – a favorite ploy of the distributors. You have to have a valid credit cart and a person 21 years of age available to sign when delivered to buy wine for direct shipping.

It’s about greed.

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