But you still need to activate your account.
Some Mainers, by seeking a change in state law, are hoping to make a little wine go a long way.
By appealing to state legislators and to the federal courts, wine enthusiasts want to make it legal for winemakers to send shipments of their products directly to consumers, either within Maine or across the state line.
Such shipments now are prohibited in Maine, a ban that critics say stifles business for the state’s wineries and violates constitutional protections of interstate commerce. Advocates for the existing law claim that it helps the state collect sales tax on wine purchased by Maine residents and helps prevent minors from obtaining alcohol via the Internet.
In an attempt to challenge the constitutionality of Maine’s law, a Bangor doctor and an Oregon vineyard have filed suit in federal court in Bangor seeking to prevent several state officials, including Gov. John Baldacci and Attorney General Steven Rowe, from enforcing the law. Philip Brooks, the doctor, and Cherry Hill Vineyard of Rickreall, Ore., are the plaintiffs in the case.
“I do feel we should have the ability to import wine from out-of-state wineries,” Brooks said recently.
Brooks said he is not a collector of wines and does not consider himself a connoisseur, but that he has been stymied in trying to get wine shipped to his home in Hampden. During a vacation to Napa Valley in California, where many wines are made, he tried to join a wine club that would ship two bottles of wine every month to his house but could not because state law would not allow him to receive those shipments.
Brooks said he has not tried to order wine from the Oregon vineyard because of the state law. He said it was “ludicrous” to suggest that allowing such shipments might result in an increase in underage drinking.
“I don’t think underage drinkers are going to be buying nice wines from out-of-state wineries,” he said.
And as for the argument that the state would have a hard time collecting taxes on Internet sales, Brooks isn’t buying it. He said such logic doesn’t hold water because Mainers already are expected to pay sales tax on everything they legally purchase on the Internet.
“If that were the reason, that would hold for buying books,” Brooks said.
One of Brooks’ attorneys said Tuesday that state laws against such sales amount to “bizarre inconveniences” that merely force consumers to come up with creative solutions to get around the prohibition.
“I don’t understand why the states think it’s in their interests to prevent these transactions,” attorney James Tanford of Bloomington, Ind., said Tuesday. “These transactions are going to happen anyway.”
Tanford, who teaches law at Indiana University, said he knows of some people in Indiana who order wine online and have it shipped to a chilled storage facility in Illinois, which, unlike Indiana, does not prohibit direct-to-consumer wine shipments. Employees at the storage facility sign for the wine, and every couple of months or so the buyers drive from Indiana to Illinois to pick up their purchases.
Other attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the matter are Richard Silver of Bangor and Robert Epstein of Indianapolis. Neither Silver nor Epstein returned calls seeking comment on the lawsuit.
Tanford said when and whether the lawsuit moves forward could depend on what action the state Legislature takes on the issue. Rep. Robert Duplessie, D-Westbrook, has introduced a bill, L.D. 1900, that would allow Maine residents and winemakers to receive or send direct shipments of purchased wine within Maine and across the state line.
Maine State Police Lt. Patrick Fleming, who heads the liquor licensing unit of the Maine Department of Public Safety, testified Monday against the bill before the Legislature’s joint committee on legal and veterans affairs. As a defendant named in the lawsuit, he also could end up testifying in federal court.
Fleming said during an interview Wednesday that wine enthusiasts can get specialty wines shipped to Maine under existing state law. Any small winery in the United States that pays $50 for a farm winery license in Maine can ship directly to retailers in the state, he said. All a consumer has to do is go to their local wine retailer and ask them to order the wine from the licensed vintner.
Allowing wineries to ship directly to consumers in and outside of Maine will put the responsibility of enforcing underage drinking laws on the shipping companies that deliver the wine, he said.
“They are the ones that will be taking the hit for the enforcement,” Fleming said.
Jeffrey Austin, supervisor in the state’s liquor enforcement division, said that if Internet-generated sales and shipments were allowed in Maine, the state would have difficulty collecting the sales tax from buyers in Maine.
“It would be problematic,” Austin said. “It’s almost like putting a padlock on your cottage at the end of the summer. It keeps only the honest people out.”
Stephanie Clapp, who with her husband, John Clapp, owns and operates Cellardoor Winery in Lincolnville, testified Monday before the legislative committee in favor of the bill.
Clapp said Tuesday that each year she receives enough order requests to sell and ship roughly 300 cases of wine directly to her customers. Because Maine law prohibits her from making those sales, she said, she has to forgo roughly $45,000 in additional revenue every year.
“It limits me to quite some extent,” she said of Maine’s existing law. “I can’t ship it anywhere in the state of Maine or out of the state.”
Clapp said shipping company Fed Ex already has stringent measures in place to make sure any alcohol it ships is handled responsibly. The company takes steps to make sure people who receive wine shipments are at least 21 years old, she said, and its drivers won’t deliver a package if the recipient appears to be intoxicated.
Clapp dismissed the argument that permitting such sales will hurt Maine’s alcohol distributors. She claimed that allowing Internet wine sales likely would increase the public’s interest in wine in general, which would help boost wine sales at stores and restaurants.
“It’s not going to affect [adversely] the business here in Maine,” she said. “I don’t really see that it would hurt anyone, especially the distributors.”
Christopher Taub, a Maine assistant attorney general who is defending the state in the lawsuit, said Wednesday that the state has a “good reason” to prohibit the shipment of alcohol directly to consumers.
“It’s to make sure minors don’t get access to it,” Taub said. “This is a problem.”
Taub said a recent study in Massachusetts has showed that minors can obtain alcohol through the Internet because, in some cases, the shipping company drivers who deliver the packages do not follow instructions on the package requiring that the recipient be at least 21 years old. Maine’s law prohibiting such sales is fair because it applies equally to businesses in and outside of Maine, he said.
“For that reason, we don’t think there’s any discrimination going on against out-of-state businesses,” Taub said.
According to Tanford, Maine is one of several states where the issue of Internet wine sales has been debated in recent years.
In a case argued last year by Tanford and Epstein, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to overturn laws in Michigan and New York that regulated Internet wine sales, he said. Both states allowed Internet wine sales and deliveries within their borders but prohibited such sales from crossing their borders – regulations that the Supreme Court determined in a 5-4 vote to be unconstitutional.
Maine’s law and similar laws in New Jersey and Tennessee also are being contested but are different from those the Supreme Court shot down in 2005, Tanford said. These laws do not overtly discriminate against out-of-state winemakers and consumers, he said, but their effect nonetheless infringes upon interstate commerce.
Mainers who want to buy wine made in the state can drive to where it is produced in a matter of minutes or hours. To require connoisseurs to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles away just to buy a bottle of specialty wine produced in another state, he said, is unfairly prohibitive.
“That will be the argument in the courts,” he said.
Tanford said underage drinking or substance abuse are not encouraged by Internet sales because youths or alcohol addicts are not interested in ordering a delayed shipment of expensive wines, which is the niche market that has found a home on the Internet. Underage drinkers and alcoholics are more likely to buy cheaper alcohol that they can consume right away, he said.
“It rarely contributes to alcohol abuse to have to pay for something and then wait for a week to have it arrive,” he said.
Internet wine purchases only can be made with a credit card, Tanford said, and any youth who uses a credit card for such a purpose likely will have to explain to their parents why the charge has appeared on the monthly bill.
“The fact of the matter is it’s not going to aggravate the problem,” Tanford said.
Tanford said the Maine lawsuit or one of the similar lawsuits in another state could end up back in front of the U.S. Supreme Court after it passes through the federal district and appellate court levels. He said a couple of cases might have to go through the federal appeal process before the Supreme Court decides to weigh in on the issue.
With conservative justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito recently being appointed to the Supreme Court, it is unclear how the court might rule on Maine’s law, in which the conservative causes of interstate commerce protections and restrictions on alcohol sales are in conflict, Tanford said.
“They like to come in last when everyone else has their cards on the table,” he said of the justices on the court.
Comments
comments for this post are closed