The Unrepresented

The passing of proposition 1183 in Washington State and the possibility of any similar legislation here in Idaho bring with it a host of side effects and unintended consequences. The most unfortunate one to us is the number of small wineries that are left unrepresented. This causes a narrowing of wine choices, which is always bad for wine consumers.

While the intent of 1183 was to broaden access to hard liquor, a secondary goal was also to broaden access to wine as it would give retailers the freedom to approach wineries directly to buy their products without the winery having to hire a distributor, or so we thought. Buried in the law was a little recognized provision that still restricts retailers from being a distributor and setting a limit on how much wine the retailer can buy directly from wineries. If the retailer exceeds the amount of wine stipulated they would then be deemed a distributor, which remains prohibited, forcing them to divest one of the businesses.

The end result is that as the new law in Washington is figured out and the nuance in the law is discovered, small wineries and small retailers remain caught in a vortex of inefficiency that restricts access. Some of the wineries caught in this situation are some of our favorites.

We have seen Bunnell Family Cellars, Fjellene Cellars, Robert Ramsey Cellars, and Willis Hall Winery among others all lose representation in this area leaving us with no access to their fabulous wines. They and others are some of the best and most innovative producers of small batch wines that are not made by larger wineries either by choice, or because their business models do not allow for economic success with more unique productions. Whether you like the exquisite Rhone offerings from Matt Erlandson at Fjellene, the elegantly produced and aged bottles from John Bell at Willis Hall, Ron Bunnell's innovative and delicious blends or the straightforward quality of the wines made by Bob Harris at Robert Ramsey, all of these wines offer choices that are not available now.

We are fortunate that our distributors are good at what they do. Overall they are doing their best to minimize the impact. But as they respond to market forces created by changes in the law, negative consequences are unavoidable. As we continue to learn more about the new law in Washington, it is providing us the opportunity to learn about what should be included here in Idaho, leading to innovative thought on how to address the current shortcomings.

We would like to see any change in the law here in Idaho to open access to small wineries from any state by allowing retailers to purchase their products directly without restriction. Distributors would continue to serve a valuable role just as they do now with wineries that offer significant enough sales flow to justify the distributor relationship. The benefit would be for the smallest of wineries, as they would again have access to our market and the consumers that enjoy their wines.

Some wineries are developing innovative solutions to the problem. We also are expecting to see smaller distributors start up to deal just with the smaller wineries who desperately want to have access to our market but are too small to carve out room at the larger distributors who have cut back on their wine capacity to make room for their ventures into hard liquor.

For wine consumers the near term solution is to continue to ask your favorite wine professional to find out if the wines you seek are available. As we pass these requests along to distributors, it helps them know which wineries are seeing the most demand. We will continue to write when some of our "old friends" regain access here. When you visit wineries, also let them know how much you would like to purchase their products locally as this will encourage them to seek solutions to these problems and get their wines into our market. With all of these efforts it will improve our collective chance of success to always have the broadest choices and re-establish the unrepresented.

If there is a topic you would like to read about or questions on wine, you can email George@thedinnerpartyshop.com or make suggestions by contacting the Healthy Community section at the Coeur d'Alene Press.

George Balling is co-owner with his wife Mary Lancaster of the dinner party a wine and table top decor shop in Coeur d'Alene by Costco. George is also the managing judge of The North Idaho Wine Rodeo, and writes frequently for the on line version of Coeur d'Alene magazine at www.cdamagazine.com you can learn more about the dinner party at www.thedinnerpartyshop.com. You can get all of these articles as well as other great wine tips by friending us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/#!/dinnerpartyshop.