Welcome to your worst nightmare: You serve a customer at a winery tasting room (or at a party at a winery) who turns out to be younger than 21, and who later gets into an accident or commits a crime like assault where alcohol is a factor and you end up with a felony, which bars you from the wine industry for the foreseeable future. AB 1128 (currently on a fast track to pass through the California legislature) amends Business & Professions (“B&P”) Code Sec. 25658 and ups the potential penalty for sales to a minor (from a misdemeanor to a felony) when the minor causes an injury, death or damage to others. Civil damages for selling or furnishing alcohol to a minor who gets into an accident or causes harm is already part of the law and the potential consequences of a current incident include license revocation for a… Read more
Posts Tagged ‘California’
The History of Amazon and Wine: What Has Changed?
Amazon is back in the wine business. During its first foray, in the Wild West dot com days of the late 1990’s when Amazon invested in WineShopper.com, the idea of Internet technology being used to sell and direct ship wine to consumers terrified alcohol regulators (and wholesalers) and ran into a wall of resistance. The dot com bust then finished off the WineShopper program. Shelving the plans for almost a decade, Amazon’s second foray into the wine marketing and direct shipping business was in 2009 with New Vine Logistics, one of the pioneers of warehousing, compliance and logistics services for wineries. That attempt failed because the CA ABC, having gotten wind of Amazon’s plans, released an Advisory in 2009 that gutted the crucial components of Amazon’s proposed program, including service fees “based upon a percentage of the sale of alcoholic beverages.” That bankrupted New Vine Logistics and set back the… Read more
