Another go at direct shipment

Advocates for direct shipment (wineries deliver directly to consumers bypassing established sale channels) will have another bite at what the state's wholesalers think of as forbidden fruit. The new bill is sponsored by state representative from the 14th Essex district David M. Torrisi and is scheduled for a hearing at 1p.m. today before the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure at the State House.

House Bill 1029 attempts to correct the faults of predecessor legislation which was struck down when the 1st Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held in a January 2010 decision in Family Winemakers of California v. Jenkins that shipping rules that favored in-state wineries over out-of-state wineries were a violation of the U.S. Constitution's so-called Commerce Clause.

The 2006 Massachusetts law had provided for direct shipment only when the source winery produced less than 30,000 gallons of wine per year and were not represented by a Massachusetts wholesale distributor.

The net effect of the law would have been to bar all direct-to-consumer shipments by out-of-state wineries while permitting every in-state winery without a distributor to mail order its wine - a nifty piece of legislative legerdemain The court saw through this gauzy veil of probity and found the the law discriminatory on its face. Good for them.

The Torrisi bill is patterned on something called the Model Direct Shipping Bill which was referenced by the U.S. Supreme Court in a ruling in a related case (Granholm v. Heald, 2004). In that case, SCOTUS ruled that the states could regulate but not discriminate in legislation governing interstate commerce in wine. The Model Bill was cited by the court as representing direct shipment legislation that would not be considered discriminatory.

According to Free the Grapes!, an organization advocating direct shipment, Massachusetts is the seventh largest wine consumption state in the U.S. and one of only 17 that continue to ban the direct winery-to-consumer shipments.

Readers eager to have their voice heard on the subject, pro or con, can contact their representatives - or maybe just invite them over for a glass of Chateau Fig Leaf.