Buying Wine on The Internet in Every State

[Jason]

Kevin - you have some interesting views especially coming from the on premise side of the fence. Let me try to answer some of your points if I may.
If I am to understand you correctly, you want a wine to have mass distribution, but when a retailer buys a huge amount and gets a good price (or runs it as a loss leader)it frustrates you.
As they say in Disney Land "Welcome to our World".
If few people have it they will protect it and charge accordingly. When a product goes primetime, someone, somewhere will try to undercut all competitors.
Wines are allocated because demand exceeds supply. Often times wineries are very much involved with this selection process. If a winery can sell all of its product tenfold, they invariably want it sold "On Premise" because it has more prestige.
The other fact is that restaurants drive the wine market. People generaly try it at your place and then go seek at retail. The on premise guys are the ones who build the brand and stick their neck out and buy the "unknown" in the first place. When the wine gets rated large and demand skyrockets, the wineries do not want to tell the guy who has had it on his list for two years, that "Sorry, you have the pleasure of buying 2 bottles this year". So the restaurants get first crack at all of it.You also have to consider that this usually just locks out the chains, not the high end retailer who specializes in this. Chains will rarely take on an unknown because they want to see a track record of sales.When it gets rated large they are then left out in the cold.
Allocated items are a mixed blessing. Yes they are easy to sell, but you can easily make two enemies for every one friend.
I keep seeing the wine/food parallel being made, but unfortunately our government highly regulates wine the same way it did directly after prohibtion.Your food purveyors don't have to register the products with the state. Also many foods can be made at will. Wine only comes once a year.
In my experience if you asked a major food distrib (SYSCO) to carry a special item, the first reply is "Certainly. How many pallets would you like?" If someone is going to bring it in, register it and inventory it, there has to be enough product to make money off of it. This is where the net comes in.
By the way, a winery manager who sells 6K case in 26 states last week told me that many states make them re-register if their is ANY change to the label, even as small as the alcohol percentage.This gets costly.
As I am writing this it is occuring to me that all these laws were written before there was any wine industry to speak of and national distribution did not exist. Also we are lumped in with alcohol as one big sin.
Sounds like its time for an update.