Would you like a bottle of wine with that?

Tennessee has had a very love-hate relationship with alcohol over the years. On the one hand, in 1838 we were the first state to enact a law prohibiting the sale of alcohol; on the other, we are home to perhaps the most ubiquitous brands of American alcohol, Jack Daniels, in the world.  After the lifting of prohibition in 1933, Tennessee and the rest of the nation sought to craft their own unique liquor laws with various levels of restrictions (typically called ‘blue laws’).  

In Tennessee, we have separate methods of control for beer than we do wine and liquor (which are treated as the same thing). As such, beer can be sold by a variety of different outlets – grocery stores and gas stations – while wine and liquor can only be sold by a liquor store. In addition, our law states a person must be a Tennessee resident and can only own one liquor store permit. 

It is this system, in addition to a somewhat complicated distributorship system, that has been the status quo in our state since at least the 1970s, and it is this system that the retailers and the wholesalers, a politically powerful group who tends to be generous with their campaign contributions, has fought to protect.  At the center of this protection scheme is Tom “The Golden Goose” Hensley, a powerful lobbyist who is often credited with helping to craft and maintain the rules regulating our alcohol in our state. 

Starting in about 2006, there has been a concerted effort to change the laws in our state to allow for the sale of wine in grocery stores. The arguments in favor – consumers want it, wine is no more dangerous than beer, the drink has become much more ubiquitous in our culture than it was in the 1970s – have so far been stifled in the legislature by the arguments made against – primarily (though not exclusively) that it would hurt “mom and pop” retailers across the state who built their businesses on the basis of the current regulatory scheme. 

The primary organization lobbying in favor of the changes is a consortium of grocery stores under the umbrella organization Red, White and Food. They launched an aggressive social media campaign to promote the idea of buying your wine with your food, as well as putting up petition surveys inside grocery stores across the state. 

Each year that legislation has been brought forward, there have been changes designed to ameliorate the concerns of the wholesale and retail liquor lobbies. The most recent iteration of the legislation has been to make it a local option issue, meaning counties or cities could vote on whether to allow food stores to sell wine in grocery stores. This would was done to help allay concerns of conservative members who represent some of the many dry counties where sales of alcohol are prohibited. 

But despite the changes, there has still been very little in the way of forward progress on an issue that 69% of Tennesseans say they support. The path forward that I see is two-fold.

One, while its unfortunate to say, it would probably behoove the grocers to increase their donations to candidates and parties in order to reduce the impact the liquor lobby has in stifling legislation. Due to the high rates of turnover in the past four years at the legislature, there are many younger, mostly Republican, legislators who don't have much of an existing relationship with "The Golden Goose" and might be more open to looking at the matter from a policy point of view.

Two, legislators can further amend the bill to try and quell the concerns of some retailers who are invested in a liquor/wine store. Some options that may do this include:

• Expanding the product selection that a liquor retailer can sell, to include glassware, mixers, low-gravity beer, tobacco and other party-related products.  While some of the newer bills have included this, there might be room for expansion that would expand the competitive ability of these stores. 
• Surtax on licenses for food stores owned by out-of-state interests. Currently the law limits a liquor retailer to one license. If the law extends wine sales to grocery stores, the state might consider having a higher priced license to sell wine in competition with state-owner retail locations.
• Phase-in the expansion of wine licenses to grocery stores by excluding grocery stores that are adjacent or in close proximity to an existing liquor store. This would help to protect the investment of liquor retail stores that were opened to provide wine and liquor to grocery store patrons. This would almost certainly be repealed at a later date, but would open the door to wine in grocery store sales in the near term. 

Whether the legislature passes this may have little to do with the provisions in the law, but rather the influence of money on politics. But assuming it is the former, these provisions might help to expand the support for this legislation throughout the legislature, enabling passage in the next term.