Greed-Governed Philistines Dismiss the Needs of the Human Spirit Fulfilled With Wine

Moving beyond the constitutional, economic and fairness arguments of liberalizing the wine industry

Something important is going unsaid.

Those of us who engage on the progressive end of alcohol politics often address restrictive wine access laws by asserting that consumers ought to be able to access the wines they want. We justify calls for more liberalized wine shipping laws, for example, by asserting that laws blocking interstate retailer shipments of wine are legally unethical and do no more than serve the financial interests of the most powerful wholesalers as well as local protectionists. Instead, we say, when we can’t find the wine we want from a local source, consumers ought to be allowed to receive shipments of these legal products from those who are selling the wine legally in another state.

What is rarely discussed are the reasons it is important that wine, rather than, say, toothpicks or spoons, are made legally accessible via interstate shipments. In any given state, thousands of wines are available for sale in local stores. What is it about wine that requires consumers to have legal access to more than those few thousand bottlings already within their grasp locally?

The answer is wine is no ordinary product. Wine, in its seemingly infinite examples, is the only man-made product that can transport its user to a very specific time, place, and people. And in consuming wine, we personally experience the moment, the place, the people, the envirnoment and the culture that generated the wine. Wine is the epitome of cultural exchange and that exchange ought to be fostered if we believe that multicultural experiences are good for the soul.