Hash Over

Cork felons
Serious Texas wine sippers are angry because they think it’s going to cut their access to wines generally not stocked on Texas store shelves. Wineries are mad because they don’t like being hauled off to the slammer for serving those sippers.

But that’s tough.
State Sen. David Sibley’s direct-shipping bill, which makes it an extraditable felony punishable by jail time for an out-of-state winery or retailer to ship wine or any other alcoholic beverage directly to a Texas consumer, is on its way to becoming law. It breezed out of the Senate by a vote of 25-5 in mid-March, and it’s now weaving its way through the House.

The only giddy ones seem to be Texas beer and liquor distributors. They hate direct shipping because–as they say with unimpeachable earnestness–kids are ordering booze over the Internet to get soused.

Sherry Muller, a spokeswoman for San Antonio Democrat Sen. Frank Madla, says that’s silly. No evidence exists to support such a claim, she snaps. “Do you really think [kids] are going to sit and use somebody’s credit card, creating a physical record, and then sit around their home for three or four days and wait for the stuff to be delivered?” Muller says the claim is a ruse used by distributors to disguise their real reason for pushing Sibley’s bill: Direct shipping from out of state costs them money.

Madla recently crafted compromise legislation he had hoped would please everybody. The bill would create a direct shippers permit allowing out-of-state wineries and retailers to send limited amounts of alcohol directly to consumers. The measure would prohibit shipments to minors. It would construct a framework for state liquor tax collections. It even slaps direct-shipment violators with Sibley’s felony penalties.

Distributors still hate it. Representatives from the Licensed Beverage Distributors and state beer wholesalers went on record with their opposition to the measure last week when it popped up for a hearing in the Senate Economic Development Committee, a group Sibley chairs.

“Bottom line is, their greed is showing through on this one,” says a wine-industry member. “They’re calling in all their chits on this.” And they apparently have a lot of chits with Texas legislators, as the swift, overwhelming vote on the Waco Republican’s measure seems to indicate. Madla’s bill should come up for a committee vote within the next few weeks. Should it survive, it will hit the Senate floor. Great to know so many are marshaling forces to save Texas from the fearsome cork-dork threat.

–Mark Stuertz

E-mail Dish at markstz@flash.net.