Bourrez Votre Visage beat me to the punch on a story I really should have been on top of. Yesterday the Supreme Court granted certiorari (i.e., it agreed to hear arguments) in a set of cases that could completely reshape wine consumption in this country. The question is whether your state government can forbid wineries in other states from selling their products directly to you, the consumer. Interestingly enough, the state line between you and your vintner means that the answer to this question can only be reached by reconciling two apparently contradictory provisions of the Constitution of the United States.

When the Constitution was first written, the dead white men we refer to reverently as the "Framers" wanted to make sure that parochial interests and petty protectionism couldn't throw wrenches into the free flow of commerce among the still largely independent states. Accordingly, they wrote into the nation's primal law a rule that the federal government would have the authority to regulate interstate commerce (it's called the "Commerce Clause"). Over the years, courts have read into this rule a converse proposition: that the individual state governments are forbidden from creating rules that interfere with interstate commerce (this is what's known as the "Dormant Commerce Clause").

Of course, when the 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition, it indirectly provided the states power to pass laws concerning "[t]he transportation or importation into any state, territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors". Ostensibly this allows the states to exercise their historic "police power": to enact laws to preserve the public safety and morals, which are apparently threatened by intemperate and unrestricted consumption of alcoholic spirits. (Incidentally, this is the same power that has more recently been enmeshed in the gay marriage debate, which is why Republican crusaders have to resort to a constitutional amendment to stop states from allowing same-sex couples to get hitched). Many years ago, state regulation was also an important bulwark against monopolism, price-fixing, and collusion among booze-peddlers in the pre-New Deal days of a weak federal government.

Today, though, the primary purpose of state regulation appears to be protection of local middlemen, rather than of the consumers who really suffer from anticompetitive business practices. Even the Federal Trade Commission thinks state barriers to direct-to-consumer wine importation are a bad idea. Which is why the wholesale alcohol distributors are the only ones fighting to keep winemakers from selling their wares over the Internet directly to thirsty gourmands like you and me.

Here's hoping they lose big, so we can all start getting shipments of family-produced wines delivered to our door without the double-markup of a wholesaler and a retailer tacked on to our bill. Cheers.