From an article by Mathhew Shaffer:
Bill A06884, introduced by Democratic assemblyman Robin Schimminger, would “amend the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law to insure that alcoholic beverages distributed in this state pass through those authorized to sell the product.” Specifically, it would “require the manufacturer of an alcoholic beverage to identity [sic] the entities that are authorized to distribute, at wholesale, the product.” This is being done in order to “protect against counterfeit or ‘grey market’ goods and would serve . . . in the collection of state excise taxes.”
Stephen Bainbridge, UCLA law professor and wine blogger, tells me that this will mean that “a limited number of wholesalers will be exclusively entitled to import wine into the state of New York.” In the past, wine retailers and restaurants could “do grey-market purchases, to bypass the big wholesalers, and buy directly from the winery, or go to the auction market or private collectors.” But if the bill passes, “every bottle of wine sold in New York has to go through a licensed wholesaler.” There are only five such in New York State, and they would control “the flow of inventory from producers to retailers.” ...
Bainbridge notes that “the limited extent to which there is a counterfeit-wine problem tends to be in very old, very rare, expensive collectible wines.” The demographic that consumes these wines is a narrow slice of the electorate and one that most New York voters would think, if they ever thought about it, does not require the Assembly’s special solicitude.
But even so, does this market require regulation and surveillance? It surely does. But that surveillance is done within the market — by connoisseurs who take steps to make sure they don’t get conned on a four-figure purchase, and auctioneers and collectors who carefully guard their reputations. Professor Bainbridge notes that “wineries are making much more sophisticated labels and bottles that are much harder to duplicate,” and requiring auctioneers to provide “documentation of where and when auctioned bottles were bought.” In other words, the market is policing the market.
