Part V: The Complexities of Wine

  
by KYW's John McDevitt

When it comes to wine distribution and sales, complicated laws vary not only from state to state, but in many cases from county to county or from township to township.

As a result, what products are available in your area are probably determined in part by those rules.

Moore Brothers Wine Company has three stores in three states-- one each in New Jersey, Delaware, and New York.  The owners say they are not able to operate in Pennsylvania because of the state's control over alcohol.

"There are so many different laws, so many different regulations."

That's co-owner David Moore (right). If you want a temperature controlled specialty wine from the Pennsauken store, he says, you can order it online but you have to go there to pick it up -- deliveries are against the law.

"The shipping of wine through a common carrier such as Fed Ex or UPS is illegal in the State of New Jersey."

At the Wilmington, Del. store, your don't pay tax but you do have to pay a visit.
 
"In Delaware it is illegal for us to make a delivery if a customer is parked further than 150 feet.  We can't carry the wine all the way to their car because that would constitute a delivery."

Shipping is permitted, however, through their New York City store to many states.

"In New York we can ship to those 37 states."

Moore says one regulation that should be in place -- that is insisted upon by Moore Brothers -- is temperature control of wine when it leaves the winery and makes its way to store shelves. He says many times consumers have no idea that a wine has been 'cooked' by the high temperatures in a cargo holds or the back of a truck.
 
Moore says the customer ends up buying a product that tastes nothing like the way it was intended:

"Does an average person know how a tomato gets to their supermarket? I mean, it's just as complicated, but nobody thinks about these things.  But what they don't know is that they are governed by (these laws), and their ability to buy products of wine and spirits is utterly governed by enormous and myriad layers of laws."