Tag Archives: wine tends

15 years since Granholm, and how much hasn’t changed in the three-tier system

GranholmThe Supreme Court’s Granholm decision was supposed to make it possible for us to buy wine from out-of-state retailers and on-line. So why didn’t it?

This is the first of two parts looking at how the century-old three-tier system still prevents us from buying wine on-line or from out-of-state retailers. Today, part I: The Supreme Court’s 2005 Granholm decision, and why it didn’t change three-tier as much as everyone hoped. Friday, part II: Dear Supreme Court: Please fix three-tier.

Fifteen years ago this spring, the Supreme Court made it possible to buy wine from an out-of-state winery in its Granholm decision. The court ruled that states had to treat wineries in- and out-of-state the same way. So, if residents could buy directly from an in-state producer, then they had to be allowed to buy wine from an out-of-state producer as well. This opened the direct-to-consumer wine market, which is worth about $3 billion today

Many smart people also thought Granholm would open the retail wine market, so that consumers could buy wine over the Internet and from companies like Amazon. But that never happened (save for the rare exception like Wine.com), and I explain why in a freelance piece I wrote for Meininger’s Wine Business International.

And why didn’t Granholm do that? Because state lawmakers, regulators, and the courts still go by what’s called the “public health and safety” standard that was set up by the political compromise that ended Prohibition and gave us three-tier. The doctrine says that if a liquor regulation protects the public health and safety, then it’s constitutional. And each group – and particularly the courts in almost every decision since Granholm – still insists it isn’t safe for wine drinkers in one state to buy wine from a retailer in another state. So it remains illegal.

Yes, this is silly and outdated in the second decade of the 21st century – but that’s three-tier for you.

More about three-tier, Granholm, and direct shipping
• Tennessee residency law: Did the three-tier system come crashing down yesterday?
• Is the coronavirus pandemic the beginning of changes to the three-tier system?
• Direct shipping loses a big one

Just in time for Mother’s Day: Artificial wine

artificial wine
“Grapes? We don’t need no stinkin’ grapes.”

A San Francisco startup has a unique Mother’s Day gift: artificial wine, made without the need for grapes

The Wine Curmudgeon has waxed philosophic many times about the future of wine criticism, most recently with the arrival of artificial intelligence. Machines might be able to improve upon what one researcher calls the “exercise in pretentiousness” that is a wine review.

And what better product for artificial intelligence to review but artificial wine? And just in time for Mother’s Day, too.

We can thank a San Francisco startup called Ava Winery, where “wine” is made in a lab from a combination of ethanol (the alcohol bit), water, sugar and assorted chemicals. No grapes needed, of course, because they just get in the way, what with farming, harvesting, and the rest of that foolishness.

Is this a joke? Far from it, for Ava’s founders already have millions of dollars behind them from two multi-nationals, and are getting ready to embark on the fairy dust adventure that is venture capital funding.

Technically, Ava does not make wine, since a product called wine must, by law, contain grapes; I wonder how they’ll get around that on the label. But that hasn’t stopped the company, which expects to launch three “wines” next year – a pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, and moscato. There is already a prototype for the last (and you can imagine how much it pained me to type that sentence).

Esther Mobley, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, bends over backwards to be fair to Ava, but eventually has to ask the most important question: Why does the world need artificial wine? What’s wrong with what we have now?

The Ava founders hem and haw, but don’t really have a good answer. My guess is that they’re doing it because they can, that the technology exists, and that they can get rich doing it. Which is all well and good, since that’s the way the world works. But it does seem to be a lot of trouble to go to create something that, in the end, will not be much different than Cherry Coke with a buzz. Which is not why most of us love wine.