Wine shipping, because it’s just that aggravating, part I

You know all that wine that you thought you bought legally? Maybe you didn’t

This is the first of two parts looking at wine shipping and how far we still have to go until we can legally buy what we want. Today, Part I: Bring on the lawsuits. Part II: One man’s travails with FedEx

The Tennessee attorney general has a message for those of us who buy wine over the Internet in his state – don’t. You’re breaking the law.

Last month, the attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, sued six out-of-state retailers who were selling alcohol to Tennessee residents. The lawsuit claimed the retailers weren’t licensed in the state, didn’t pay state taxes, and had ignored cease and desist orders.

The point here is not whether Internet wine sales are good or bad (regular readers know how I feel about that) or that every retailer who does out-of-state sales is breaking the law. Rather, it’s that enough do, and that this is the third state attorney general in the past couple of years to sue retailers for illegally selling alcohol in their jurisdictions.

And there are likely to be more, as pressure builds from our friends in the wholesale business to clamp down on Internet sales. Because, of course, these kinds of Internet sales mostly skip the three-tier system and the wholesalers don’t get their constitutionally protected piece of the pie.

How can that be, you ask? Why would anyone sell wine illegally?

Because, of course, they can – until they’re caught.

The blog’s official booze lawyer explained this to me years ago. It’s called “the title scam.” Look on the site where you buy wine, and in the small print you’ll probably find something like this: “Title to all alcoholic beverages purchased on this Site pass to you in the State of California when the goods are picked up by the common carrier.”

This is a legal fiction, in which your purchase of the wine from an out-of-state retailer is supposedly no different from buying it at the corner shop. That’s the “passes to you” bit; you take ownership of the wine from the Internet retailer as if the retailer was down the street.

Which, as the blog’s attorney said with a loud laugh, is very fictitious.

In fact, it has no legal standing at all, which is also true for other bits in website fine print, like “the customer is solely responsible for the shipment of alcohol and must abide by their local and state laws.” That’s why retailers can be sued – as has happened in Tennessee as well as Michigan and Ohio.

So far, no one has gone after the customers, though that has happened. Several years ago, Texas cracked down on illegal interstate shipments, focusing on the purchasers. I had to wend my way through the state liquor cop bureaucracy to ensure that I wouldn’t be arrested for getting samples.

So who knows what comes next?

Photo: “Man delivering online alcohol delivery order” by The Bag N Box Man LTD is licensed under CC BY 2.0.