Illinois wine producers v beer distributors

Lobbyists are sure in the news these days. The latest story and one of interest to southern Illinois has to do with new legislation promoted by the beer distributor industry and their efforts to put controls on how Illinois wine producers sell their product.

Prompted by the Associated Beer Distributors of Illinois and sponsored by State Reps. Lou Lang and Jay Hoffman, as well as Republican State Sen. Timothy Schmitz, House Bill 4350 seeks to amend the Liquor Control Act of 1934 to limit the number of cases small wineries can ship to customers per year and stop the winemakers from directly selling their products to local retail stores. Instead, the bill asks that small wineries use distribution companies to keep state regulation procedures in place.

In its simplest form this bill would force wine makers to use distributors to get their wine out as opposed to letting them continue shipping their product to customers or retailers on their own. The distributors want to be the middle man and have all business go through them.

Beer distributors and the beer industry have a lot of clout, a case in point being their ability to keep the state of Missouri from enacting an open container law. But the wine makers argue that they do not produce nearly enough wine to make the use of distributors viable.

George Majka, owner of Pomona Winery in Jackson County said this: "If I could find a distributor that would carry my product and would be diligent about selling it, it might cost me several thousand dollars a year; but they provide a service," Majka said. "The problem is my volume is so small it would be difficult to get distributors to sell it."

Governor Blagojevich is on record as being squarely behind the wine growers, "If we continue that growth and provide our grape growers and wine makers with the knowledge and resources they need to produce a quality product, we will all benefit from the results as more jobs are created and tourism dollars brought into the local economy."

But the beer distributors have lots of clout including the governor's main ally in Springfield and also co-sponsor of the current bill, Jay Hoffman. Couple Hoffman with other state officials with distributor ties like Judy Baar Topinka, Senate President Emil Jones and Senate Republican leader, Frank Watson and there seems little hope of the small wine companies winning this fight. The battle at the present time seems mainly one of power. The distributors want to be the only shipper of wine, but the wineries don't produce enough to make it worth the distributors effort. If the wine can't get to the customer, what will happen to an industry on the rise? Cross posted at Respublica