When Government Protects Businesses, Businesses Become Corrupt

The people fighting sensible liquor reform laws in New Jersey are the ones with the most to lose:

[T]he reforms in New Jersey have been met with protests from liquor retailers and wholesalers, who worry that new ways to buy alcohol threatens their livelihood.

. . .

The booze battles have caused an uptick in political spending from the industry. Lobbyists representing the beer and wine industry spent $640,500 in New Jersey last year, up by 15% from the $556,900 spent in 2010, according to an analysis of state Election Law Enforcement Commission records. The industry also made $500,325 in contributions to individual lawmakers and state political committees last year, the records show.

The largest chunk of the lobbying money was spent by associations representing liquor retailers and wholesalers.

Wine In Supermarkets

If you’ve ever traveled to a state that doesn’t have some goofy post-Prohibition-era restriction on selling hooch in grocery stores, you know what a thrill it can be. People in New York are trying to allow supermarkets to sell wine, a cause that doesn’t get the attention it deserves in the zero-sum world of commercial entities arguing over who stands to make or lose money. In short, New York wine makers want to sell more of their product while mom-and-pop liquor stores want to restrict other businesses.

The idea that it’s more convenient and probably cheaper for a consumer to be able to go into a supermarket and buy wine doesn’t seem to come up. Or at least “consumers” don’t in and of themselves constitute a constituency that anyone wants to lobby for. Sure, we feel “bad” for the mom-and-pop liquor stores, but the role of government isn’t or shouldn’t be to prop up certain storeowners.

The frustrating thing is that most of the reporting about this issue tends to be skewed toward the urban liquor store owners, where there’s a built-in Shop Around The Corner good guy/bad guy narrative. You don’t get the other side of the story, where people who live in rural areas might actually benefit from having more than one place to buy hooch within however many miles.

But even if you focus on the urban storeowners’ arguments, there’s a logical inconsistency:

[The owner of a] wine shop [who] has run wine stores in Little Italy for more than 24 years, says letting supermarkets get into the wine business would push out small stores.

“They’ve already taken away the fishmongers, the butchers and the bakers — and now they want the wine people as well,” [he] said of supermarkets. “I don’t understand why they need more profit.”

He said he goes out of his way to stock New York area wines and that if given the chance, supermarkets wouldn’t. “I carry 30 wines from New York,” [he] said. “Supermarkets will sell the most generic crap they can make money off of. It will be a very pedestrian wine selection.”

Again, no one’s talking about the consumer — if supermarkets sell cheap “pedestrian” wine, doesn’t that open up the mom-and-pop stores to expand their selection? If supermarkets stock the big sellers, suddenly the mom-and-pop shelf space won’t have to be taken up with generic or otherwise pedestrian crap. I never understood this part in particular. And if you want to even playing fields, take the extra step and allow liquor stores to sell food — that way they could really cater to a high-ticket clientele . . .

Man, Oh, Manischewitz!

The hottest new varietal is moscato:

In the opening to the video to his new single, “Country Ass Nigga,” Nelly takes a healthy slug from a wine bottle, grimaces ever so slightly, and wipes his upper lip clean as he savors the fruit-juicey kiss of the first rapper-branded Moscato (“Freaky Muscato,” marketed by his hometown crew, the St. Lunatics). Moscato, if you didn’t know, is a white-wine varietal, and Mr. Hot in Herre isn’t its only notable partisan in the hip-hop firmament; it’s also been extolled by Drake, Soulja Boy, and Gucci Mane. Those plugs have accelerated a full-blown Moscato boom: According to Nielsen, sales grew about 73 percent in 2011 after doubling the previous year. It is the fastest-growing varietal in California — E.&J. Gallo, California’s top bulk winery, has introduced five new Moscato products over the last two years. Growers in California have been frantically planting Muscat grapes (the kind used in Moscato) to keep up with demand, marking the first known occasion in which rap has directly affected the biosphere.

The whole thing sort of reminds me of Manischewitz’s 1960s-1970s ad campaigns that targeted novice or beginning wine drinkers. (You can see tons of them at the National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting at the Jewish Museum; they’re a hoot.) Check out this one of Sammy Davis, Jr., for example:

Now if Gallo used Nelly as a spokesperson, the wine and spirits industry can finally atone for the sins of the Cristal people.

Proving Yet Again That Money Can’t Buy Taste, By Which They Mean It Literally Can’t Buy Taste

Alex Halberstadt extracts some great stories from Manhattan sommeliers for The Faster Times:

After two gangsterish Russians downed several thousand-dollar bottles of champagne, they switched to ’89 Mouton Rothschild, just under $2K per bottle. They emptied one bottle, then another; when I opened a third I realized it was corked. I had more of the wine downstairs and when I headed there one of the men barked at me and demanded to taste from the bottle in my hands. I explained that it was corked, but either he didn’t follow my English or didn’t know what “corked” meant. He sipped the wine and smiled. “The best one yet,” he declared. “The others were too fruity.”

(More, please — these stories are awesome . . .)

Harvest — It’s That Time Of Year . . .

. . . when thieves steal grapes straight off the vines:

Thieves using a harvesting machine have stolen the entire crop of a Languedoc-Roussillon vineyard.

Grower Roland Cavaille his vineyards in Villeneuve-les-Beziers were targetted on Sunday night. Thieves took advantage of a full moon, and used a harvesting machine to steal 30 tonnes of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.

You might be wondering, as I was, how one steals an entire vineyard, but the folks at Château Bauduc in the Bordeaux region say that it’s not as difficult as you would think:

One feature of so many Châteaux, which most wine lovers are unaware of, is just how spread out the parcels can be. Although some Châteaux, like the 33 hectares of Troplong Mondot in St-Emilion, have vines that surround the Château as a single entity, this is surprisingly unusual. A few of the great Cru Classés of the Médoc have as many as 40 to 50 different plots, many of which are quite a trek from the Château itself.

. . .

With a small amount of local knowledge, it wouldn’t be tricky to steal grapes under cover of darkness.

The sight and sound of harvesting machines, with tractors and trailers in tow, is very common right now. Around St-Emilion today, for example, I saw at least 20 machines in operation.

And it’s not just this one story — thieves also hit a Washington vineyard recently:

Sometime between Sept. 15 and Monday, someone slipped into Grand Reve Vineyard near Col Solare and took about 1.25 tons of Mourvedre, valued at about $4,000. Benton County sheriff’s officials have no suspects.

. . .

It’s not the first time grapes have been stolen on Red Mountain. [Grand Reve vineyard manager and partner Ryan] Johnson, who also manages the world-renowned Ciel du Cheval vineyard across from Kiona Vineyards Winery on Sunset Road, remembers in 2001 when someone went into a Cabernet Sauvignon block and stole several hundred pounds of grapes.

Johnson’s operation is high profile, literally and figuratively. His vineyard is just above iconic Col Solare and is the highest on Red Mountain, making the vineyard easily visible from Interstate 82. His operation also has received a lot of press from wine publications. This vineyard was planted in 2008.

“It’s a bit isolated up there, especially when Col Solare is closed,” he said. “If I was going to be a jerk, I’d steal from Ciel du Cheval or Klipsun, but you’d be more likely to get caught. There are not a lot of lights up by Grand Reve.”

If the thieves came in the middle of the night, they would have had to use five-gallon buckets pick the grapes, then dump them into a pickup, which a ton of grapes likely would fill. Something like that would take more than an hour, he figured. Johnson said whoever stole that amount of grapes likely is making a commercial wine “or a whole lot of garage wine.”