WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE???????
Whining About Wine As many people know, I am a lover of wines. I certainly wouldn't consider myself a wine connoisseur by any stretch, but I enjoy experimenting with different wines from different regions of the world of all varieties, and I certainly know more about wines than that some are red, white, blush, or sparkling. As I was web browsing this morning, I decided to visit www.primewines.com and see if anything peaked my interest. I was more than delighted at what I found. Hundreds of wines are available for purchase, including hard-to-find wines. The site is wonderfully easy to navigate, allowing the browser to search their wines by region, color, taste, variety, price, and food matching choices. I immediately chose to search their selection of Riesling, which I was quite impressed with. I then chose to search the blush wines, and there it was...a very hard to find bottle of Eiswein Rose. Eiswein Rose is harvested in December from frozen grapes, and these grapes have to be crushed in this frozen state. These grapes produces a very fruit, sweet tasting wine and is served ice cold...my dream wine! Never having purchased wine online before, I stupidly assumed it would be like any other online purchase I make on a daily basis. Confident this would be the best $60 I have ever spent on a blush wine, I added this heavenly bottle of wine into my shopping cart and continued to browse more wines. During my search, the wine delivery FAQ link caught my eye. Curious about the shipping method and amount of time it would be before my bottle of bliss arrived, I clicked on the link. At the top of the wine delivery FAQ page, this is what it reads: There are a number of states where we are still working to establish delivery channels. At this time we have no wine delivery in the following states:
Living in the shithole we call Massachusetts, I was more than agitated that I would not be able to have my tasty beverage delivered to my house. My mother, however, lives in Louisiana, which is not on this ridiculous list. Perfect solution, I thought. So I emailed my mom, asked her if she'd mind if I had a bottle of wine shipped to her house, which she would then turn around and ship to me. Then I kept reading the FAQ page, and at the bottom they had a link to www.freethegrapes.org, which is a project dedicated to ensuring consumer access to fine wines. I wanted to know more, so I went to freethegrapes.org. At this site, they have an automated system that allowed me to send a letter to my state legislators urging them to pass laws which would allow wines to be shipped from out of state to one's doorstep. (Rep. Spellane and Rep. Chandler...you should be receiving my letters anytime now!) I scroll down a bit further to find this map of the United States, each state color coded according to their specific laws.
If you'll notice, Louisiana is categorized as "Limited shipping & permit states," whatever the hell that means. Unfortunately, the site does not have an area that explains exactly what each of these categories mean, but I am quite sure I won't be able to have my wine shipped to Louisiana either. (I will be investigating that further as soon as I finish this article.) As this information processes in my mind, I can't help but begin to feel extremely frustrated and annoyed. I hope you realize IT IS EASIER TO BUY CRACK IN THIS COUNTRY THAN IT IS TO BUY A BOTTLE OF WINE!!!!!!! It is a felony in five states to directly ship wine! Are you kidding me? Just last week I was watching a piece on the local news about a woman in Massachusetts who starved her baby to death because according to her religious cult, a vision from God told them the 10 month old child could eat nothing other than breast milk. This woman did not get convicted of murder...instead she got convicted of assault with a sentence of time served. So basically you can walk free after torturously starving your child to death, but god forbid you ship a bottle of wine to someone's doorstep, you're looking at hard time, pal! A little over a month ago, Massachusetts FINALLY made it legal to sell alcohol on Sundays...and some people still protested this. Isn't it 2004? Am I in some kind of time warp, because half of these archaic laws imply it is more like the year 1804. Now my first question about the restriction of wine delivery is why? Is underage drinking the concern? Although that is the main reason given when proposing these legislations, in reality it is not. I don't know about you, but when I was under 21, I don't recall eagerly spending large amounts of money on fine wines. A 40 ounce bottle of Colt 45 would've sufficed. 25 cent drafts of Busch Light at Sir Morgan's Cove were staple beverages of mine in my early twenties, not $50+ bottles of wine. I can almost understand the concerns people would have of underage drinking due to sales of any and all alcohol sold via the internet, but fine wines should be in an entirely different category. Furthermore, if an underage person wants to get their hands on some alcohol, they are going to do it no matter what. When I was 14-15 years old, getting alcohol wasn't a problem of any kind...and we didn't have the internet available like kids do today. Teenagers having access to alcohol is hardly a new issue...it's been going on for ages upon ages. So if underage access isn't the real reason for these restrictions, what is? Hmmmm, what could it possibly be. Who could possibly be behind this madness? (SATAN??? <- obscure SNL reference) No, not Satan...it's even worse...why it is lobbyists, of course! The Wine & Spirit Wholesalers of America (WSWA) to be exact. These are the distributor middlemen introducing felony legislation and threatening jail time to anyone (more specifically the winemakers themselves) who directly ship wine. The problem I see is that it is not just the winemakers that are suffering from these laws...it is the consumer. Consumer access is grossly restricted by laws such as these. These distributors are basically telling us, the consumers, which wines we can and cannot enjoy. Why? Well because direct sales to the consumer obviously cuts out the middleman....the distributor. Well that doesn't sound too fair for the distributor, now does it? Well, yes it does, because America has 2,100 wineries which produce over 10,000 new wines each vintage. That is more wines than distributors can stock and sell. Less than 5% of wine production is ever likely to be shipped directly to consumers. Instead of the distributor middlemen competing by delivering service and value, they create felony laws and make threats of jail time to the winemakers. On the WSWA's web site, they have a Fact vs. Myth page. On this very page, they claim as fact that:
So based on these findings, are we to assume that 15% of Americans who consume alcohol are NOT satisfied with the selection of beer, liquor and wine available locally? Are we also to assume that 18% are NOT satisfied with the convenience of shopping for beer, liquor and wine locally? 15% and 18% of the alcohol drinking world is quite a large amount, number-wise. I have to wonder what the percentage would be if they surveyed wine drinkers separately and didn't categorize them with beer and liquor drinkers. You can get almost every kind of beer available in the US at any old corner liquor store, but wines...especially the rarer ones, are simply not as easy to find. Another Fact vs. Myth on the WSWA's web site is as follows:
Okay, I just re-read that 4 times. Where does it once mention anything about kids buying expensive wines online? They don't even prove their own "myth" to be false!!!! Not only that, but it claims that 10% of underage drinkers get their alcohol via the internet or home deliveries. There is only one reason for that...this 10% represents the lazy underage drinker. I assure you, if the internet were not around this 10% would be getting off their lazy, fat asses and acquiring their alcohol by the same methods the other 90% are using. Freethegrapes.com claims to "support augmenting, not replacing, the three-tier system with the controls and regulations necessary to respect local laws, to avoid underage access and to provide provisions to make tax payments." The WSWA claims that this augmenting of the laws would "create an even larger shadow market in alcohol sales, which would not be tracked, regulated or taxed by state authorities. In the process, minors would have a new way to obtain alcohol by avoiding a face-to-face alcohol transaction with a state-licensed agent." It sounds to me like the WSWA is using any excuse to keep these restrictive laws in effect to ensure their revenue isn't affected by direct sales by wineries to the consumer. But what ever happened to the consumer's freedom of choice? I am going to conduct my own little experiment. I am going to go back to primewine.com and pick out 5 wines I would purchase today online if they were allowed to ship to Massachusetts. I will then make it my personal mission to visit or call every wine and liquor store between Worcester, MA and Boston, MA in the next few months and see how many stores have these 5 wines of my choosing as well as how long it takes me to actually have these 5 bottles of wine in hand. Just the time wasted by searching for these 5 bottles of wine alone is inconvenient when I could have already placed my order on primewines.com and have had my wines at my doorstep within a week! These days, convenience is a top priority to today's consumer... and trust me, I consume! Take it from a consuming expert. My best friend Val will agree...between her and I, I am convinced our shopping habits have greatly contributed to the rise in the economy. If you want an accurate view of consumers' opinions, ask those that overly consume on a daily basis....convenience is key, and these laws make my consuming experience anything but convenient. This is supposed to be a FREE country. Consumers in the United States get to choose, and I find it awfully disturbing when wholesalers seeking to protect their monopoly get to restrict consumer access and choice. I find it equally disturbing that I can take a stroll through Anytown, USA and buy as much heroin as my heart desires easier and quicker than I can buy a bottle of fine wine. Email Missa with any comments at: MissaJC324@verizon.net |
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Every day I watch the news and just sit there shaking my head in disbelief,
frustration, and disgust. There's one question I ask myself daily:
