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Tuesday, March 20, 2012


Exclusive: CARE Act Now “Off The Table” As Suppliers,
Distributors Reach Rapprochement

A year ago at this time, there was considerable tension between the distribution and supplier tiers over the CARE Act, but the two sides now have apparently agreed to set aside their differences over the issue.

Last month, suppliers and distributors reached a rapprochement when WSWA and DISCUS leadership convened in Palm Beach in February. “The CARE Act is officially off the table,” says Republic National Distributing Co. president Tom Cole, who attended the joint meeting and adds that suppliers and distributors are now working together more closely than any time in the past few decades to resolve their differences.

Spirits, wine and beer wholesalers initiated CARE in an effort to affirm the states’ primacy over the federal government in crafting alcohol policy. Supplier groups, led by DISCUS, vociferously opposed CARE, contending that the bill would tilt the playing field too far in favor of distributors. While CARE never made it to a congressional vote last year, it remained a divisive issue in the months before and after WSWA’s annual convention in April, which many DISCUS members chose not to attend.

CARE was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 as the Comprehensive Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness Act (HR 5034) and then was relaunched last year under a slightly revised name (the Community Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness Act, or HR 1161).

Connecticut Sunday Sales Initiative Passes Key Legislative
Hurdle, Change Could Come Before Summer

Connecticut’s proposed Sunday alcohol sales initiative has cleared a key legislative hurdle, with the state legislature’s General Law Committee today voting in favor of a Sunday sales plan. The bill now moves on to the Joint Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee. If passed there, it will be sent to the full House and Senate, which would have until May 9 (the legislative adjournment date) to approve it.

The bill calls for Sunday sales hours of 10 am to 5 pm, as well as sales on Memorial Day and certain other holidays. It would also raise the limit on store ownership to three stores from the current two. But overall, the bill is a sharply scaled down version of a sweeping proposal put forth in January by Governor Dannel Malloy. For example, Malloy’s plan had called for raising the limit on store ownership to nine. Also rejected were legalizing the sale of beer in c-stores, allowing bars to remain open until 2 am, eliminating minimum pricing and other deregulation moves that would have favored big box retail chains.

Still, today’s vote represents a significant step for Sunday sales backers. Malloy said he’d reserve judgment on the revised proposal until he sees the bill in its final form. It’s possible that the minimum pricing elimination and increase in store ownership to nine could be reinstated into the bill.

If passed, Sunday sales would go into effect immediately, with some additional initiatives becoming effective July 1. Connecticut is one of only two states in the country (the other is Indiana) that bans the retail sale of all alcohol on Sundays.

News Briefs:

•A recent poll conducted by Harris found that Millennial wine consumers are less likely to be repeat buyers of the same wines, backing up marketers’ frequent characterization of Millennials as diverse and nomadic in their purchasing decisions. Only 32% of Millennials (or Echo Boomers, as Harris calls them), aged LDA to 35, report “sometimes or frequently” purchasing a bottle of wine they’ve had before, compared with above 50% for consumers aged 48 and older, and 40% for Generation X consumers, aged 36-47. Overall, almost half of U.S. adults over 21 say they drink wine several times per month (48%) and over one in five say they usually purchase four or more bottles per month (22%). Nearly 90% of consumers surveyed said they purchase American wines, with around one-third reporting purchases of Italian, Australian and French wines, and around one-fifth reporting purchases of Chilean, Spanish, Argentine and German wines. Harris’s poll consisted of 2,056 adults surveyed online February 6-13.

•Chicago-based wine marketer Vin Divino, which recently announced the addition of Italian wine Bersano to its portfolio, tells SND that it’s targeting up to 10,000 cases for the Piedmont label but anticipates gradual growth. “Our ultimate goal is to build Bersano to about 8,000-10,000 cases, but if we do half of that in the next couple of years we would be very pleased,” said Vin Divino director of marketing Andy Taylor. Bersano has been out of the U.S. market for about four years. Prior to that it was handled in the U.S. by now-defunct Five Star Imports and was selling around 4,000 cases annually.

•The ViniPortugal trade group is backing Portuguese wines with a new $3 million campaign in the U.S. Launching this month, the campaign consists of events, educational programs and digital and social media pushes targeted toward the trade, press and consumer segments in New York, San Francisco, Miami, Washington, D.C. and Chicago. Initiatives are slated to continue throughout the year. Portuguese table wine sales (containers of two liters or less) in the U.S. rose by nearly 19% to 617,000 cases last year, according to ViniPortugal.

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