Happenings

American imperial stout: F. Martin Ramin for the Wall Street Journal

I just finished an interesting article on strong beers in the Wall Street Journal…all about imperial stouts weighing in at 9-11% alcohol. The craft beer industry is falling all over itself to bottle and can stronger and stronger beer, while the wine world (championed by born-again critics and winemakers alike) is busy apologizing for the rich, intense wines (often with higher alcohol levels) it used to bottle; now favoring lighter (color and flavor), higher acid wines! I remember when I was proud to have “graduated” out of light, plonky, fizzy beer with about 3.5% alcohol, to craft beers with flavor, color, and extract. Now, I am made to feel like I am wearing a coat of some rare exotic fur for crafting and consuming rich, full-flavored wines. I am sorry, for NOT being sorry! Some call it a natural progression, I call de-evolution!

Andrew

This is the time of year when I begin to worry that perhaps I need to be medicated.  I come off the heady, frenetic pace of harvest and crush, the hustle and bustle of the holidays, and run headlong into the mire of alcohol-related bureaucracy.  Come January 1, my feet are trapped in the greedy goo of countless reports demanded from a juggernaut of government agencies.  A dark cloud descends over my entire countenance.  Instead of bottling volumes of wine, I’m bottling volumes of red tape.

Every state has a different permitting and licensing process.  Reports must be filed, varying taxes must be paid, permits and licenses must be renewed.  Exporters require their own special documents.  Federal paperwork must be filled out and data must be collected.  Accountants, lawyers, and licensing specialists must be engaged and paid to file and report on our behalf.

As a small winery, I’m the guy who also needs to source all of our glass, capsules, labels (with their concomitant bureaucracy), boxes, and closures.  One could consider these activities equally mind-numbing, but at least they have a direct correlation to the end goal of producing our product, a bottle of wine.

Just as I don’t need to hear actors expounding on foreign policy, you probably don’t care to hear a winemaker talk politics.  But I can’t help but start to feel pretty libertarian at this time of year.  I realize we have some need for alcohol regulation, but honestly, this is ridiculous.  Did you know that we cannot legally ship directly to customers in 12 of our 50 states?  Much of state regulation still contains vestiges of prohibition laws and/or is designed to protect excise taxes and distributor rights.  How does any of this benefit the consumer?

Customers, who have tried our wines elsewhere, frequently ask me why our wine is not available in their states.  My answer is simple, either it’s not legal to ship direct-to-consumer in the state, or the cost to set-up licensing, permitting, etc. in their state is economically prohibitive.  There’s a great website that addresses this topic:   http://freethegrapes.org/.  If you’re feeling like a 60’s activist today, you can use it to quickly let your legislators know that you’d like to see changes in these regulations.

And at the end of the day, none of this does much to improve the quality of our product, and it certainly doesn’t reduce prices, nor stimulate the economy.  Thanks, but no thanks, Uncle Sam.

Rant over…cloud already lifting….

Andrew