Examiner.com

Support Marylanders for Better Beer & Wine Laws by visiting their website

We took a brief respite from chasing wine bargains today to travel to the Maryland State House in Annapolis to lend our support to a proposed new law that would allow consumers to buy wine from out-of-state wineries and retailers and have it shipped directly to their homes in Maryland.

As we noted last month, the legislation has broad support among Maryland lawmakers, but appears to be stalled by a few powerful members of the General Assembly who are in the pocket of the state liquor lobby. We were asked by Marylanders for Better Beer & Wine Laws to testify at today's four-hour hearing by the Economic Matters Committee of the House of Delegates. Hopefully some opinions were swayed. But we're not holding our breath.

Here are the DC  Budget Wine Examiner's prepared remarks, a three-minute version of the longer written testimony submitted to the committee.

March 4, 2010

To: Maryland House of Delegates, Economic Matters Committee, Derek Davis, Chairman
RE: Testimony in Support of HB 716

Mr. Chairman and distinguished Delegates, thank you very much for the opportunity to address the committee.

My name is Rob Garretson, I live in Gaithersburg, MD, and I am a wine enthusiast and blogger. I write the DC Budget Wine Examiner pages for Examiner.com.

As the title suggests, my typical reader is not the wine collector but the average consumer who enjoys fine wine but doesn’t like to spend more than $15 on a bottle. There is an increasing selection of these value wines available from around the world, as well as domestically from California and the Pacific Northwest; and today 48 of the 50 states, including Maryland, make wine.

Yet citizens of the so-called “Free State” are effectively barred from enjoying the full range of these offerings. In the 10 months I’ve been writing my Examiner page, I have published nearly 125 articles highlighting compelling but inexpensive wines available locally. Unfortunately, upwards of 75 to 80 percent of them pointed readers to wine shops in Virginia and/or the District of Columbia.

My website constitutes a mountain of anecdotal evidence that Maryland consumers are missing out on the tremendous selection of wine available today, not to mention the best bargains. And undoubtedly many aren’t missing out, but heading across the District line or the Potomac River to stock up on wine.

In 2000 when I moved back to Maryland, my colleagues in Boston gave me as a going-away present: a $200 gift certificate for Wine.com. Needless to say, I was unable to use the gift.

A few years later I read in Robert Parker’s – Maryland-based – Wine Advocate newsletter an enticing tasting note on a $10 wine that Parker described as “the greatest wine value I have ever tasted.” But with one phone call to the distributor I learned that the wine would be sold in Virginia and the District only. Maryland consumers were out of luck.

I also read in Parker’s newsletter very positive reviews of a boutique California’s winery called Garretson Wine Co. Though I had no relation to the winemaker Mat Garretson, I still thought it would be great to have a “house” wine that bore my name. But I think you know where this story’s going. Such a small winery couldn’t get distribution in Maryland, and I couldn’t buy it directly and have it shipped to my home. Eventually that small winery went out of business, undoubtedly due to its inability to gain distribution for its small-volume wines in states like Maryland. (My purchases alone might have kept them afloat, had they been legal.)

Finally as a father of an 18-year-old high school senior, I’d like to add just one point about the mythical underage-buying risk, which I haven’t yet heard raised. Buying wine online requires a credit card or debit card, which creates an electronic paper trail. Such transactions are inherently easier for parents to monitor than cash changing hands, as is the traditional method teenagers have to buy beer and wine illegally.

The fact that underage drinking – along with phantom tax evasion – has been raised as a lingering concern over this bill is ludicrous on its face. As a parent, as well as a consumer and wine enthusiast, I urge you to move this bill forward and vote “yes” on Senate Bill 566/House Bill 716.

Thank you for your attention.

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