Wineries in Maryland and throughout the country may soon be able to ship wine to Maryland residents. Finally, it looks like Maryland will join the 37 other states and the District of Columbia and permit some form of shipping wine directly to Maryland homes. The legislation won initial approval from the full General Assembly. Within minutes of the story being posted on the Baltimore Sun website the rants began.

“The bill only helps the rich,” rants one writer who claims that Maryland residents can already order any wine at their local retailer. This isn’t true in my experience. When California winery South Coast won winery of the year, my local retailer had no distributors that carried their wine and said he couldn’t get it. I was out of luck.

The second rant was the ever-present claim that the state government will “pass legislation that will cut local jobs?” Also a similar rant, “So now the middle man will be cut out, local wine distributors will see sales decline as will local wine stores, and Marylanders will lose more jobs.” It would be helpful if these ranters would provide statistics of how many jobs were lost by retailers and distributors in the 37 states and the District of Columbia that already allow direct shipping of wine to their residents. What about creating jobs? Someone has to deliver the wine and wineries that do a lot of shipping may have to hire someone to fill the orders.

Next rant states that Maryland will lose tax money on the consumption of wine in the state. However the wineries that ship wine to Maryland residents are collecting tax for the state of Maryland so the state is not losing tax money.

A commenter indicated that direct shipping would only account for 1% of wine sales in Maryland. One percent should not have a big impact on those that have profited since Prohibition ended. Finally Maryland residents have similar rights as do people living in 37 other states and DC.

The residents of Maryland should be thanking their state legislators for seeing that direct wine shipping should be available to Marylanders.

Cheers,
Terry