If you are a wine lover and wine collector, you may think that anyone can ship wine to you, and that you can ship wine to anyone. You would be wrong.
The recent Supreme Court decision on direct shipment of wine (Granholm vs. Heald) has provided the incentive for states to change their laws to conform with the ruling. California is responding by moving SB 118 through the legislature.
A few interesting facts have surfaced. First, it is currently illegal for an individual to receive a wine shipment without a permit from the ABC. I'll bet that no many folks have such a permit. The new law at least does away with that requirement.
Second, a major theme of the Supreme Court ruling was to declare reciprocal shipping agreements unconstitutional, as a restraint of interstate trade. So SB118 removes the reciprocal requirement for winegrowers, but keeps it for retailers. There is some talk that keeping this suspiciously unconstitutional provision in California law is being done on the behalf of politically powerful wine wholesaling companies. I have to admit it looks that way.
Tom Wark at FERMENTATIONS has an excellent article on all of this. If you are at all interested, I recommend you read it.
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