Wine Police


• By Allen Dale "Ole" Olson   |   Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 12:08 pm   |     |   Print   |   Permalink

In the December issue of DECANTER Magazine, there is a brief report about two separate supermarket incidents in the UK involving family shopping and a bottle of wine. Two bottles in one incident. A cashier refused to check out a shopper accompanied by her seventeen-year-old daughter because she (the cashier) feared the woman would later serve the wine to her daughter.

In a separate incident at another supermarket, a woman was told she couldn’t allow her son to carry her grocery bags because they contained wine. While store managers said these actions were not policy, they defended their cashiers preferring that “they err on the side of caution.”

As the reporter said, you have to read these reports twice to be sure you “get the punchline.” I needed a second look to be sure the incidents occurred in England, not the U.S. deep South or Indiana. In Indiana, high school “baggers” can sack wine and carry it to your car; they just can’t ring it up at the cash register. When there’s a teenager at the register, he or she calls for help when a bottle of wine appears beween the cheese and the lettuce. Not the bagger. He or she can stuff it in along with the milk and bread and tote it off to your car.

So far, we haven’t heard of any arbitrary decisions in Indiana by cashiers regarding children accompanying their parents on grocery shopping trips. Sometimes, however, when I see a family with elementary-age children filling their carts with soda drinks and snack food, I’m tempted to become a bit arbitrary myself, but restraint always steps in. We are free in Indiana to choose our own diet so long as we don’t allow teens to handle our wine or beer.

Across the river in Kentucky, it’s ok for kids to see beer in the supermarket but not wine. One must enter a store’s separate facility in the Commonwealth in order to match your evening’s seafood or porterhouse with an appropriate wine. And don’t bring in the kids. Make them wait till they’re around your table before you let them see your delicious Beaujolais or stately Bordeaux.

All this can be somewhat amusing till you begin to realize that the people responsible for this nonsensical policing see absolutely nothing wrong with it. Indiana, for example, would rather furlough state employees without pay than allow Sunday sales of alcoholic beverages which would certainly go a long way toward helping with the state’s revenue shortfall.

It s true that America is a democracy governed by the adage of “majority rule,” and that more people in America do not consume adult beverages than do. But even so, there are occasions when we actually tolerate minority rights such as when one political party or another, for example, opposes a bit of legislation or the appointment of a Supreme Court Justice. It’s just where alcohol is concerned that we become a bit paranoid.

I lived in Britain during the days of crazy pub laws and did my share of “loading up” at last call, and I have been pleased at how far British restaurants, pubs, and retail stores have come with their wine offerings. I hope these maverick cashiers don’t set the Brits back to my pre-Carnaby Street days.

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