Taking a taste is OK

COEUR d’ALENE — Wine and beer makers have a new avenue to entice passersby to sip their wares.

The Coeur d’Alene City Council opened downtown streets to wine and beer tasting after considering the measure at a committee meeting this month and having it approved by the full council.

And that’s just fine with Jim and Julie Sheppard, who plan to open their sipping booth at Wednesday’s downtown farmers market.

“I’m all over it,” said Jim Sheppard, who owns Sheppard Fruit Wines in Harrison with his wife, Julie.

The couple started the business more than a decade ago and it has since expanded to stores throughout the Inland Northwest.

And although sipping the wine was allowed at the Prairie Avenue farmers market — which is on private property in Hayden — Coeur d’Alene’s open container laws previously nixed sipping at the downtown market.

That is, until now.

“It makes total sense,” Council member Dan Gookin said. “If you’re going to be selling wine at a street fair ... to give away free samples.”

Gookin was among five council members who voted to amend the code allowing for tasting of wine and beer at street fairs. Ron Edinger was the only council member to vote against the measure that was supported by the downtown business owners and police, according to the city.

Sheppard said wine tasting, a staple of marketing and selling his fermented fruit beverage, has for years been allowed Saturdays at the Hayden market. Coeur d’Alene’s stance, however, kept the Sheppards away from the Wednesday downtown market until last summer.

They noticed then that the lack of sipping is directly proportional to the lack of selling.

“It was pretty tough,” Sheppard said. ”It’s a leap of faith to take (someone’s) word for it, who says you’re going to like it.”

The Sheppards’ raspberry, rhubarb, pear, cranberry elderberry and pear wines sell for $12 a bottle and their huckleberry wine sells for more than $20.

Dropping that kind of money on the promise of a merchant is chancy, he said.

“It’s kind of a leap of faith,” he said.

It was a small leap of faith that got the measure before the city council. General service committee members agreed to stall the measure because the city’s open container law, under which it appears, had already been amended a dozen times.

“I feel there needs to be further discussion on how convoluted this code is starting to become,” Council member Kiki Miller said.

The open container law allows for open containers of beer and wine at some special events, in three of the city’s parks, makes amends for some businesses downtown, and addresses drinking on and off sidewalks and rights of way.

Mayor Steve Widmyer, however, pulled the latest tasting amendment to the forefront, placing it on the council agenda last week where it was promptly passed, while sending the rest of the ordinance to be revisited by staff members in an effort to streamline the rule.

“They got off on two tracks,” Widmyer said. “I was for getting this one issue to council.”

For that Sheppard, and Ike Parrish, who owns Beauty Bay Winery, which also sells at the farmers markets, are grateful. The farmers market season is short, Sheppard said.

The latest amendment allows the sellers to give samples of no more than 1.5 ounces in small plastic cups in an enclosed area that is part of the selling booth. Sipping is limited to adults older than 21. The small cups are often filled just a fourth full, Sheppard said, so the amount is far less than the allotted amount. But all it takes is a taste.

“People just want a little sip,” he said.

The City Council set for later this year further discussion of the remainder of the open container ordinance.

“Sometime this fall (we’ll) come back and have a council workshop on it,” Widmyer said.