Here is the response of Ed Wassmer, owner of the retail store Young's Fine Wines & Spirits:
Your editorial on Feb. 4 titled “Some Wine With That?” was remarkable in that, in five short paragraphs, it contained more innuendo, illusion, allusion, and plain old misstatement than I’ve ever before seen in such a short piece.
From the top, I’ve no reason to doubt that almost 600 towns have no liquor store upstate. Newsflash – many towns in rural New York have no supermarket, movie theater, nail salon or four star French bistro, either. I think your writer should also know that many rural inhabitants like their elbow room, sans retail over-saturation, and are not pining for a mall near them anytime soon.
Re your writer’s killing of two entities with one wild assertion, New York, like all other states in the Union, created their liquor control laws when Prohibition was repealed in order to provide their citizens with a controlled environment for the safe importation, distribution and controlled sale of alcohol. The laws (and by the way, there’s more than one), were definitely not written “in true Albany fashion” to “protect the interests of one powerful industry”. Have the laws succeeded in their aim of providing safety and control? Actually, more so than your writer could ever imagine – New York’s alcohol related driving fatality rate is one quarter of California’s.
Moving on, your writer is only guessing when stating that Gov. Paterson’s main interest in changing the liquor laws is budgetary. The Governor has been advised by his own Law Revision Commission that the economic consequences are not understood and the legislature told him last year that the idea was a job killer with potential losses greater than the fees he hoped to attain.
Lastly, your writer claims that the “bill” would “provide consumers more choice”. Not to nitpick, but the Governor has no bill – the notion of allowing big box stores to carry wine is a line item in his proposed budget. Regarding providing consumers more choice, sorry to be the bearer of good news, but, your writer is mistaken - again. New York currently has over twenty-two thousand wines in distribution throughout the state. Compare this, for instance, to Florida, where wine is sold in big box stores, but, less than seven thousand wines are available to consumers.
Besides limiting consumer choice, destroying an entire industry, and, submitting New Yorkers to greater peril on their highways and roads, I think the Governor’s proposal has a bigger problem. Promoting a more than eight fold increase in the number of outlets purveying wine, when the consequences in states with unfettered distribution are well known, leaves the Governor looking like a very poor public policy initiator, indeed. It is an election year, you know.
Ed Wassmer
Proprietor, Young’s Fine Wines & Spirits
Manhasset, New York
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Here is another from Will Ouweleen of Eagle Crest Winery:
We write to clarify points made in the February 4, 2010 Editorial “Some Wine With That?”
You seem to agree with supermarket wine advocates who claim New Yorkers suffer from too few wine outlets.
In truth, New Yorkers already consume more wine by volume than any other state, save one.
New Yorkers love wine and the New York wine industry is growing.
However, supermarkets offer little real value to most New York wineries. We are too small and they are too big to dance gracefully together.
New York wineries grow when consumers ask their local wine merchant to carry New York made wines. We don’t need more outlets. We need greater awareness.
Regular reviews of New York wine in The Times would matter far more than would the incremental growth promised by supermarket lobbyists.
We’ll toast to that!
The Winemakers of Eagle Crest Vineyards
Hemlock Lake, New York
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The idea of raising needed revenue by issuing new licenses and expanding the wine trade is sensible, but it should not be accomplished on the back of small businesses.
Many of the provisions of Gov. David A. Paterson’s bill will be detrimental to small operators. When you call opposition to the bill an “utterly cynical defense of the little guy,” I must take umbrage as the proprietor of a family-run wine distributorship. Most of my competitors are also family-run operations, as are most of the wine shops I sell to.
The editorial speaks of my paid lobbyists (I wish) and my monopoly hold on the wine trade (tell that to all my competitors scrambling for a spot on the list at a hot restaurant); this does not connect with the reality of the wine trade in New York today.
Victor Owen Schwartz
New York, Feb. 4, 2010
The writer is president of VOS Selections, a wine importer and distributor.
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I like a glass of sauvignon blanc with my dinner as much as the next guy. But in supporting a proposed New York State law to allow the sale of wine in grocery stores, you don’t acknowledge the unintended health consequences of adding about 20,000 retail alcohol outlets to the state’s alcohol distribution system.
Public health research shows that higher densities of retail alcohol outlets are associated with more youth drinking, more problem drinking and more alcohol-related health conditions. In New York City more than 25,000 people are hospitalized and 1,500 people die every year from alcohol-related injuries and illnesses.
Public policies on alcohol should protect the health of the city’s population, not harm it.
Nicholas Freudenberg
New York, Feb. 9, 2010
The writer is a professor of public health at the CUNY School of Public Health, Hunter College.
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