The Anti-State Blog

If you want to see stupid government regulation, just look at how alcohol is regulated. I have a good knowledge of alcohol regulation because my wife and I are amateur winemakers. And at least the government does not interfere with us with that. But what if we became very good at making wine and wanted to sell a little of it, part time. Winemaking itself is not very capital intensive. With $400 in equipment you can easily enough make hundreds of bottles of wine. Grapes (or other fruits, for fruit wine) are not that expensive.

But what is expensive is regulation. To sell any wine in the USA the federal government has to approve its label. What if you make a lot of different wines or limited edition wines? Well then you will have to wait to sell them or sell them with a previously approved generic label. So rather than saying a wine is a Chardonnay-Semillon mix, the label could only say ‘White Wine’.

Also, a number of state and federal permits are required to make wine. There are the normal local permits for any food/drink establishment, but then there are special alcohol permits as well. Then there is the alcohol permit to be able to serve alcohol on the premises. Then, if you want to ship out of state, you have to know which states you can ship to. Also, depending on where you are located you may be required to not sell on certain days or before certain times or to not sell above a certain number of bottles to any one person.

What if you want to sell through grocery and liquor stores to grow sales? In almost all states, you are required to sell through a licensed distributor. And there are only a few distributors in each state, all with lots of political influence, the prices they charge are high. So even if your winery became big enough so that it could save money by cutting out the middle man, it is forbidden to do so. Luckily, Wal-Mart and Costco are fighting these laws in a number of states.

What if you want to show people how to make their own wine? They would do the work but you would oversee it and deal with all the unpleasant cleaning and maintaining of the equipment. Sound interesting? It is illegal, even if those who make the wine only consume it themselves. Why? They are not licensed.

Is it not wonderful how the government protects us?