Wine Law

This past weekend I presented at a Law Library conference in San Francisco. One of the presentations I attended was a short run-down on wine law. I found the history utterly fascinating! I won’t go into to much detail here but I will say that the current hot-topic issue is direct-to-consumer shipping. Of course each state has its own rules regarding who can ship wine within the borders and how much can be shipped.

Rules, you say? Well this sounds like a research project!

Let’s say you are a grower and producer of wine and you would like to ship your wine out of state to individuals in, say, Kansas. Where would you go to locate information?

The Wine Institute contains many useful resources. Based out of San Francisco, the Wine Institute…”is the public policy advocacy association of California wineries. Wine Institute brings together the resources of 1,000 wineries and affiliated businesses to support legislative and regulatory advocacy, international market development, media relations, scientific research, and education programs that benefit the entire California wine industry.”

They have gathered together, on their website, resources for all 50 states. The Kansas page not only provides a summary of what it takes to ship wine into the state, it also provides links to relevant documents regarding Kansas alcohol laws.

  • Kansas Department of Revenue’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC)
  • Application for a Liquor License
  • KS Business Tax Application – Register to pay Liquor Enforcement Tax
  • Liquor Enforcement Tax Return – Monthly Filing

There are many more!

So check out the Wine Institute’s website and have a look around. It’s quite fascinating!

W. Blake Wilson, Instructional Librarian