Free The Grapes

[Chris Norrick]

Some of you may know the Indiana House is working on legislation to allow continued direct in-state shipments of wine from Indiana "Farm Wineries" direct to consumers. Here is some info I've found on the topic and I encourage you to contact your legislator to voice your opinion.

This all started last year when the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot treat in-state and out-of-state shipments differently. Indiana currently does not allow out-of-state shipments but does allow in-state shipments. This was supposed to be good news because it would allow us to receive wine from out of state farm wineries and would increase their business opportunities. Instead of allow BOTH in-state and out-of-state shipments, a law was passed to ban ALL shipments late last year. An injunction was filed that I think runs to June to continue to allow the in-state shipments.

House Bill 1190 was introduced to permanently allow in-state shipments. In committee last week, it was heavily modified. It now reads: to get a bottle of wine shipped to you from in-state, a distributor has to pick it up from the winery and take it to a local retail store for you to pick up. Each step can charge up to a $2 fee per bottle for this 'service'. So we went from logic to red-tape to allow the distributors and retailers to get a cut from the small farm wineries. I think this is a mistake and have informed my legislator of this.

Here are some links to the info:
Indiana House Bill 1190
Indiana Law Blog from Jan 20
Indiana Law Blog form Jan 19
Indiana Direct Interstate Wine Sales Litigation
Free The Grapes