Minors Don’t Buy Alcohol On-line. And yet, this fundamental fact has gone unnoticed in the wake of a recently released study that looks at minors access to alcohol conducted by Chapel Hill North Carolina and funded by the Robert Woods…

Yesterday, the Wine & Spirit Wholesalers of America (WSWA) explained that while they DID oppose it with millions of dollars and while they ARE financing a lawsuit to stop the law from taking effect, they are in fact NEUTRAL on…

Consider this scenario: 1. Wineries are required to sell their wines exclusively to wholesalers 2. Wholesalers are not required to distribute the wineries’ wines 3. Wholesalers won’t represent and distribute the wineries’ wines. We are talking here about Alabama. The…

I note with some interest that among the American alcohol wholesaling community there is a great deal of talk about the need to unite the the various sectors of the alcohol beverage industry to advance a common political agenda. There…

The Wine & Spirit Wholesalers of America, the national association representing American wine wholesalers, finished their annual convention in Las Vegas on Friday with their CEO Craig Wolf warning members that the challenge of "privatization" “is being used as a…

"Pennsylvania residents could have a little more liquor freedom, but only if they prefer American wine over the French, German or Australian varieties….’The people of Pennsylvania are really getting less than what they should be getting,” Farnese said, adding that…

ALERT! Unless you have an unusually deep interest in the alcohol legal theory, the constitutional foundations of the Three-Tier System or wine politics, then you should probably maneuver away from this blog post. In my most recent post on Health…

For the past decade or more, Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, otherwise known a the "Commerce Clause" has been a key issue in the somewhat obscure realm of wine politics and law. It has been a…

Worrying that money might control politics is akin to being concerned that Burgundy is overpriced. That horse has left the barn. But what’s true and what matters where money and politics is concerned is that money buys access to the…

The recent wine scandal in New York, where giant wholesalers are attempting to make life difficult for small wholesalers with the passage of an "At Rest" law, is an object lesson in how the industry has politically balkanized itself in…

For those of you who appreciate the more arcane in the wine blogging world, for lawyers who like wine, for wine industry compliance professionals, for those inclined toward the politics of wine, and for those that just like to dive…

A bill under consideration in Utah would require that two of the five members of its Alcohol Beverage Control Commission must be "drinkers". This is pretty funny on its face as no other state in the Union would ever have…

It’s clearly an attack on faith and conscience!! It has come to my attention that as part of implementing the mandates of the new federal health care law, I am required to provide health insurance to Wark Communications employees that…

I like Justice. Real justice, the kind that provides an appropriate response to a dastardly act, feels good. And it makes you believe that civilization is a good thing, despite its occasional tendencies to roll off the rail. Today, it…

As a wine publicist, I almost always am dealing in minutia, not Big Picture thinking. It’s the nature of the job. What’s the best way to deliver this message? How to define this niche? What’s the import of this particular…

If I’m not mistaken, we are seeing the development of a strong cultural aversion to the now notorious "1 Percent". Put another way, there appears to me to be a strong and still developing cultural and political zeitgeist that includes…

Yesterday a federal court issued a decison in a wine related case. Consumers and Free Trade lost in this case, one that probably should never have been brought. However, within the final ruling by the three justices that heard the…

In a recent post concerning New Jersey and the State of Direct Shipping, I concluded by writing, "There is a great deal to do across the country to make consumer interests paramount in the alcohol regulatory world." This kind of…

With New Jersey passing direct shipping legislation on Monday and the governor only needing to sign it, really one more significant state exists where the wineries and significant numbers of wine consumers need to get direct shipping: Pennsylvania. Yet the…

There appears to be a nascent move among public health advocates and government consumer protection agencies to much more carefully monitor how alcohol is advertised and marketed in the digital world. The Sunday Baltimore Sun Article, "Review Shows Alcohol Companies…

Any wine pundit worth his syrah must at some point make the effort to evaluate the quadrennial crop of presidential candidates for their potential to promote American wine. Who would be most likely to push American-made wine front and center…