For 20 years, Leesburg winemakers Lew and Amy Parker have driven their product to market in a Volvo sedan. The trunk holds 17 cases, and the drive to the local wine shop or restaurant takes about 10 minutes.
Such a simple system worked for many small wineries in the Washington area for decades. But last year a federal district court in Virginia and last month the Maryland comptroller said in-state wineries should not be allowed to distribute wine without going through middlemen. In both cases, the practice was deemed unconstitutional in response to lawsuits by out-of-state wineries that were denied the same privilege
And the cost to small wineries may actually be increasing under the new system:
“The wine industry is in a state of chaos,” said Lew Parker, owner of Willowcroft Farm Vineyards and vice president of the Virginia Wineries Association. “The benefits of the Supreme Court decision are not being felt anywhere.”
Parker said sales of wine to restaurants and stores account for 32 percent of his business. If he goes through a wholesaler, he said, he faces a charge of $30 or more per $100 case of chardonnay, or half his profit.
My first thought is, why not just eliminate the middleman and allow in-state and out-of-state wineries to deal with retailers and consumers directly ? One possible explanation, of course, is that the distributors have more political power in Richmond and Annapolis than the wineries do.
At a House hearing Monday and a Senate hearing Tuesday, winemakers, grape growers, wholesalers, economic development officials and retailers spoke for and against bills that would preserve wineries’ ability to sell to retailers and a wholesaler-backed bill that would require all alcohol, including wine, to go through them.
Of course they’d suggest that. The obvious benefit of eliminating the distributors, though, for both consumers and wineries, is so apparent that one would think even a politician could see it. My guess is that they won’t
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