H.B. 2165 tough to swallow in present form

Anyone living in Pennsylvania interested in buying wine from outside the state and having it shipped directly to their home should be following with interest House Bill 2165. Introduced by Rep. Paul Costa, D-Allegheny, it would provide for the direct shipment of wine by both in-state and out-of-state wineries through the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, or PLCB. In order to ship products directly to customers, wineries would need to obtain a limited winery license and direct shipper license from the PLCB.

It’s already meeting opposition, including this editorial that ran in the May 10 issue of the Pittsburgh Post –Gazette. Bob Mazza, president of the Pennsylvania Winery Association, said he missed the first hearing on June 9 in Harrisburg, but that one and perhaps two others are planned once the state budget in approved. Those could occur in Philly and/or Allegheny County, although Mazza said he’s planning to write and request that one of the meetings is held in Eric County, where 95 percent of the state’s grapes of produced.

Where ever the meetings take place, Mazza said, there needs to be changes made in the legislation.

“In its current form, we’re dead against it. It does a lot of negative things,” he said Thursday night. “One of the things addressed in there is that currently a Pennsylvania winery is permitted to produce up to 200,000 gallons of wine. They want to reduce that down to 80,000 gallons, and the purpose for that is to keep wineries that are larger than 80,000 gallons from shipping to customers in Pennsylvania, to keep parity in keeping with the Supreme Court ruling. Well, I mean, that’s silly, as far as I’m concerned. So we’re going to limit our industry now so that we can limit the size of wineries that ship into Pennsylvania. It doesn’t make a lot of sense in my book.”

Mazza said he missed the first hearing, but did work beforehand with the association’s lobbyist, who spoke along with a representative from one other winery. Saying that “hopefully we’ll resolved this because it’s something that needs to be resolved,” he added that there are enough parties in the discussion sensitive to what the association wants to give him confidence that both sides can find some common ground.

“We have a lot of respect within the legislature,” Mazza said. “The PLCB (Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board] has vowed to work with us to reach a compromise. We’re not out to eliminate the PLCB. We want to work within the system, but we truly feel that the consumer in Pennsylvania is certainly entitled to purchase wines from another state and have them shipped directly to his or her home, as they do in many other states. They don’t have to go through the state store system.

“But appropriate taxes, if they need to be collected; that can be accomplished. We have no problems with that. But we certainly are on the side of consumer now in terms of their getting the royal shaft right now in terms of their ability to purchase wines from out of state.”