05/19/05 More direct wine shipping

To describe the effect this week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the scope of the Twenty-First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution had on the Northwest wine industry & well, Bill Nelson, Vice-President for lobbying group Wine America, uses this analogy. NELSON: I think you could look at this ruling as a crowbar that will enable wineries to open most of the states of the union to direct shipment. So what exactly did the High Court rule upon? It said that part of the Twenty-First Amendment pertaining to prohibition and interstate sales of alcohol & the part interpreted by twenty-four states to mean that wines and spirits from out of state wineries meant for direct-to-consumer sale could be banned & was discriminatory, and therefore unconstitutional. Explaining the laws, the ruling, and what it means, is Tim Hightower of the Washington Wine Institute. HIGHTOWER: What they said was that states can not have discriminatory laws. It's a great first step, there's kind of a next step to go though, is now each of these states that have a discriminatory law & it was discriminatory in the fact that say New York allowed New York wineries to ship to New York residents but they did not allow out of state wineries to ship to New York residents. And so now that the state has the option of saying "OK, we're not going to allow any wineries, Washington State, or New York state, or any other state, to ship to New York residents, or they can say all wineries across the nation can ship to New York residents and that's what we hope they do. So while Northwest wines won't necessarily have carte blanche to all twenty four states, depending on which states decide not to ban all shipments of wines within their state, our region's wine industry is expected to gain some significant markets, according to Nelson. NELSON: There are a number of very important states that allow their in-state wineries to ship to customers but prohibit out of state. Most significant to those were New York and Michigan. Those laws were ruled unconstitutional. We expect that both in Michigan and New York, wineries in the Northwest should be able to ship to their customers in those states pretty soon. And the ruling has caused excitement among the Northwest wine industry in anticipation of these new markets, especially Washington State, the second largest wine producing state in the nation.