Wine consumers winning in courts.

Wine consumers looking for a break from the high prices and limited selection imposed by state monopolies have a spate of good news after federal judges in Virginia and North Carolina threw out state laws that prohibited out-of-state wineries from shipping products directly to consumers.

Meanwhile, in a similar suit against a New York law, Consumer Alert, as an amicus curiae, submitted an affidavit to the court explaining how such laws harm consumers. These laws, on the books in several states, typically bar out-of-state wineries from shipping wine directly to consumers, instead mandating that consumers must buy out-of-state wine from state-licensed (or owned!) retailers. The wineries must sell to the retailers or state-licensed wholesalers who in turn sell to retailers.

Given limited shelf space, such retailers simply cannot stock wines from every winery in the country. Wine aficionados in those states are simply out of luck -- any numbers of fine wines are unavailable to them. And those that are available typically sell for more than they would otherwise, given the state-sanctioned monopolistic structure of alcohol distribution in that state. Steve Simpson of the Institute for Justice, the public-interest law firm representing New York wine consumers, told the court "consumers must pay anywhere from 18 percent to. 25 percent more per bottle because of the wholesalers' mark-ups. New Yorkers deserve the kind of freedom citizens in 37 other states enjoy."

The chief legal dispute in these cases is over the tension between the Constitution's commerce clause -- which gives Congress, not the states, the right to regulate interstate commerce--and the 21st Amendment, which left alcohol policy in the hands of states after repealing the disastrous experiment of Prohibition. It is when these state laws discriminate against out-of-state vintners for the benefit of monopoly wholesalers (and at the expense of consumers) that the state oversteps its authority under the 21st Amendment.

No matter how the case in New York is decided, the ultimate decision may have to be made by the Supreme Court: A series of contradictory court decisions and the fundamental Constitutional issues involved virtually guarantee it.