With apologies to Martin Scorsese, this is something like the movie the “Gangs of New York” where the rule of the street is challenged by the immigrants and everybody is greasin’ ‘The Man.’
And, if there was any question whether Tom at Fermentation had his finger on the pulse, all doubts should now be erased. Though, I’m not going to compare him to Bill “The Butcher.”
From the back-room of the Uptown Café in Bloomington, IN this past Friday afternoon to an article in The Terre Haute Tribune-Star on Sunday to Tom’s blog today, Tuesday.
That’s pretty quick given that Indiana isn’t exactly a hot bed of interesting wine news.
I was at lunch a week ago with an Indianapolis foodie blogger, planning the Twisted Oak wine dinner actually, when she mentioned that a friend of a friend was starting up a consumer-oriented wine group in order to fight the Byzantine laws of the state regarding the shipment of alcohol.
I subsequently traded emails last week and over the weekend with Allen Dale Olson, known to friends as Ole, though I was unable to attend his kickoff meeting to a new consumer organization called Vinsense.
Vinsense is dedicated to creating more consumer wine choice in the state of Indiana by exposing the three-tier system.
I have to give them credit for trying to fight (ostensibly) the good fight and for setting some lofty goals (signing up 10,000 members in the next year).
Their positioning is crystal clear and they are using easily understandable, shareable language—the kind of sound bites that people can latch onto.
Their tag line is: “Because the glass is 95% empty, not 5% full.”
This is in reference to the notion that —legally—Indiana consumers can’t buy wine direct and the wholesale tier controls the flow of wines in the state, excluding some 95% of the market of available wine.
I get all of this and I understand it.
Here’s where I diverge. This fight has been fought on many levels for many years, mostly to no avail. I mean, the state just went through this shipping bill and passed a band-aid law in 2006 that allowed in-state wineries to ship in-state while preventing shipments from out of state wineries UNLESS you sign a form IN PERSON at the winery.
So, in theory, you CAN get Pinot from that Willamette Valley winery you visited, one of the examples they cite in their verbiage as not being possible. It’s just a bit difficult to do and most everybody is operating under FUD (a scientific word).
Anybody that followed the winery fight in local media through 2005 into 2006 understands that it was an absolute tit ringer (another scientific word).
I’m somewhat skeptical, despite the best intentions by the guys at Vinsense, that this is going to be anything other than a nice idea with good intentions.
A quote from Jim Purucker, Executive Director from the Indiana wholesale organization, in the Terre Haute Tribune-Star article, tells the story in a few shorts words:
“Every day there are retailers being suspended” or having their licenses revoked for selling to minors, being a public nuisance or not paying their licensing fees or taxes, said Jim Purucker, executive director of the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of Indiana (WSWI). Wholesalers “are the gate-keepers,” he said, allowing the state to efficiently enforce its tax and underage drinking laws. Opening up the system to 7,000 to 10,000 producers would make the job of collecting state excise taxes “enormous,” Purucker said.
This is what it’s all about. And, the state isn’t going to give the wineries any help—because this is about out of state wineries, not in-state wineries. Aforementioned laws were changed in 2006 to help the in-state wineries. I have it straight from the lips of a high-ranking official in the Indiana ATC, while at a backyard barbecue in the summer of ’06, that the goal was to not kill Indiana wineries while still maintaining some order. And, order to the government is an organized way to collect taxes.
Unfortunately, I doubt this is going to change anytime soon.
That is, unless, of course, Angelo Pizzo decides to write a movie about this saga. Pizzo is an Indiana native son and an Advisor for Vinsense. Pizzo also happens to be the writer for two of the best sports movies ever made, both based in Indiana: Hoosiers and Rudy.
Here’s where Pizzo could actually come in handy save for writing a muckrucking movie—provide seed money.
I’d like to see Vinsense take this fight into the streets. I’m not advocating an “if you can’t beat them, join them” mentality, but to paraphrase an idiom I heard this past weekend, “It’s like prison sex, if it’s gonna happen, you might as well enjoy it.”
And, in this regard, fighting the three-tier system is like being the recipient of some good old fashion prison lovin’
But, (and a big but) there are other ways …
Indiana ATC laws are pretty easy and explicit in what you can and cannot do.
In order to be a wine wholesaler you basically have to be incorporated as a business, have a beer wholesalers permit or be eligible to obtain a beer wholesalers permit and have a place to store wine that can be your listed premise.
That’s it. Well, maybe you can’t have a felony on your record, but besides that it’s pretty easy.
Any fool can become a wine wholesaler.
Here’s the gauntlet that I’m throwing down. This isn’t directed at Vinsense, because I think they’re fighting a noble fight, but I’d like to see somebody mobilize interested wine consumers and set-up an LLC and sell partnership shares in this LLC for, say, $2000 a piece—limited to the first 250 participants. I’d like to see a consumer owned distributor, similar to a cooperative, but set-up as an LLC so partnership is divided for a for profit entity.
This company will have $500,000 in start-up money—plenty enough cash to establish a line of credit, enough to rent a location, pay a President who will hold the license, hire a sales guy and an operations person while securing initial inventory.
Use this distributor to take in positions of boutique wines from California, Oregon, Washington, Michigan and other states where people travel on vacations and have cultivated favorites that are not currently available in the market.
If it’s true that Indiana only has access to 5% of the market, setting up another distributor to join the six or seven already in business would be a no brainer based on fulfilling the pent up demand in the market.
Maybe it’s just me, but I prefer to fight the fight on the field and not be a screaming parent yelling at the ref’s from the sidelines.
After I clear up a little conflict of interest issue with my employer, I’d be the first guy with my check book out to invest and buy shares and every time I bought a beautiful bottle of wine at retail that was from a distributor that I had ownership in I’d laugh all the way to the bank because I’d know I’d be getting paid on that same bottle of wine in my other pocket.
This is completely doable, a solution to the problem within the context of the problem and a lot easier to do than change the minds of low level politicos that don’t get the issues and receive retainer fees from wholesalers because they’re usually lawyers themselves and only getting like $13K a year to be an Indiana representative.
To defeat the enemy, you have to think like the enemy. Who wants to pour a glass and start a distributor? It’s better than being on the receiving end of prison sex.
