26 states (plus DC) currently allow corkage on a statewide level, although some reserve that right to more local jurisdictions. So, not quite as prevalent as direct shipping, but that still puts Maryland in the minority on this issue. Locally, Virginia, Delaware and West Virginia prohibit any sort of corkage outright, while Pennsylvania does allow individual establishments to set their own policy (as long as you bought that alcoholic beverage in PA, because state law makes it unlawful for anyone to possess wine or liquor purchased outside of that state) along with the District.

Here is the text of the proposed amendment to the Maryland Code:

PG County Public Hearing PG 305-11

For the purpose of allowing a patron in a restaurant for which a certain alcoholic beverages license is issued in Prince George’s County to consume under certain circumstances wine not purchased from the restaurant; and generally relating to alcoholic beverages in Prince George’s County.

The new text of the article in question would read (changes in bold):

Article 2B – Alcoholic Beverages

12-107

(b)            (2)            Except as provided in paragraph (10) of this subsection, it shall be unlawful for any person to drink on the licensed premises of any license holder any alcoholic beverages not purchased from the license holder on said premises and not permitted by this article to be consumed on the premises; and it shall be unlawful for any license holder to permit any person to drink any alcoholic beverage not purchase from the said license holder on the premises covered by the license which he holds and not permitted by this article to be consumed on the premises.

(10)            In Prince George’s County, a patron in a restaurant for which a Class B beer, wine and liquor license is issued may consume wine not purchased from the restaurant if the wine is consumed with a meal.

If passed, the law would take effect July 1, 2011.

So how did this play out on the floor? Here’s a look at some of the testimony:

Jolene Ivey, official bill sponsor in the House of Delegates: The delegate cited concerns by restaurants that the ban is a burden to restaurants and pointed out that the practice is quite popular as a promotion elsewhere in the US. In addition, she identified Montgomery County as another jurisdiction exploring similar legislation for similar concerns about the burden on restaurants as they lose customers to DC.

Donnell Long: A restauranteur who feels that he is losing business to Washington, DC as patrons interested in the service pass over his restaurant in Upper Marlboro (Old Towne Restaurant).

Adam Borden: The well-known consumer advocate pointed out the discrepancy created by prohibiting corkage at a restaurant with a liquor license, which are trained to check IDs and not serve alcohol to minors, cannot offer corkage while restaurants that do not have such a license may provide the service.

In general there wasn’t any negative reaction or pushback from the floor or the delegation. I’m not sure if the stunned silence represents imminent approval or a need for the council to digest.

The Vinotrip take: As evidenced by the testimony, changing this law is good for businesses. Obviously choice is good for consumers. Adam’s point is also well taken; if anything, the current law is logically backwards in allowing non-licensed venues to permit BYO while licensed ones may not (although I’d hate to see closing that loophole as the only outcome of this debate!). The current amendments on the table in PG and Montgomery Counties will go a long way towards creating a more competitive environment for local restaurants. All in all, seems pretty reasonable.

However, why stop there? Allowing corkage statewide would offer similar benefits to restaurant owners looking to attract a new market segment or create innovative partnerships with local wineries and wine lovers – for example, a promotion to buy a bottle from Frederick Cellars in the historic district of downtown Frederick and then bring it over to one of the nearby restaurants. Or perhaps restaurants could invite local wine tasting groups to host events at which the chef prepares a menu tailored to the club’s wine list. Either of these would violate current laws if the restaurant in question held a liquor license. Ultimately I see a lot of potential winners from more sensible legislation.

That’s all for now – we should start to hear more details soon with the 2011 Annapolis session set to kick off in January. We’ll see how things look once the special interest groups start to weigh in…

Update: Adam tells me the Montgomery County hearing on Monday went well too, with delegates generally signalling some support at this stage in the game. See this story in the Gazette for more info.

12/06 Update: The Baltimore Sun published an op-ed today about the “flawed” laws banning corkage in Maryland.

Did you know that it’s illegal in Maryland to bring your own wine to dinner at a restaurant, a practice known as “corkage”, if that restaurant is already licensed to sell beer, wine or spirits? It’s true (although corkage IS legal for restaurants without a liquor license – go figure). Even if the wine you would bring isn’t featured on the wine list, say a 200-year-old Champagne recovered from a shipwreck near Finland, Maryland law does not allow liquor-licensed restaurants to set a policy allowing you to consume it on their premises.

Friends of all Maryland wine fans and consumer advocacy group Marylanders for Better Beer and Wine Laws are at it again, pushing to change laws and give those choices to restauranteurs and their patrons (with a little star power help from Frederick-area chef Bryan Voltaggio, he of Top Chef fame). The front lines in this battle are Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, where state delegates introduced bills in response to concerns from restaurant owners that they lose the BYOB crowd to DC, where corkage is legal. Both counties are looking to pass their own respective bills allowing the practice of corkage at restaurants.

Do you feel that restaurants should be allowed to set their own corkage policies to serve the needs of their patrons? If so, here are some opportunities to testify and make your voice heard:

Montgomery County – YOU MUST REGISTER BY 12PM ON MONDAY
7PM on Monday, December 6
3rd Floor Hearing Room, Stella Werner Council Office Bldg.
100 Maryland Ave.
Rockville, MD 20850
http://www.montgomerycountydelegation.com/testify.html
Bill #MC 13-11
Map to location

Prince George’s County – Register by emailing Del. Jolene Ivey (jolene.ivey@house.state.md.us)
7PM on Thursday, December 9
Rennie Forum (in the Largo Student Center)
Prince George’s Community College
301 Largo Rd
Largo, MD 20774

Bill #PG 305-11
Map to location

I’m attending the Prince George’s County hearing on Thursday to see what the people have to say – look for a post later this week!

Finally got out to Oregon’s Willamette Valley to do some wine tastin’, picture takin’, and relaxin’. The first thing I noticed while driving from winery to winery is all the dysentery is how they have other stuff planted besides grapes. Drive through any major wine region around the world and you’re likely to find every available square inch under vine. The Willamette Valley has a feel that Oregon has some other stuff going on besides wine, like hazelnuts.

Sidebar: hazelnuts taste nothing like you’d expect mostly because all you’ve been exposed to is hazelnut flavoring in your coffee. Like most other things, the flavor has drifted far from the source material.

We stayed in Carlton, OR at the aptly named Carlton Inn. The Carlton Inn is everything a Bed and Breakfast should be: nice, outside space, inside space, friendly, and good food. The proprietors knew just about everyone in the valley and had tons of recommendations. Downtown Carlton – a one-road stretch that is about 2000 feet long – features several tasting rooms from surrounding wineries. This is typical of small-town Willamette Valley life, the towns have tastings so that you don’t need to go driving through the hillside like a maniac. You are free to stumble through their streets like a maniac, as it were.

In order to taste a wide swath of wines, we stopped into
The Horse Radish in downtown Carlton. The staff was so friendly and so happy to see us I thought they actually knew The Wife from somewhere. We got a big cheese plate, a flight of Oregon Pinots from the tasting bar, and settled onto one of the couches to watch the afternoon to by.

Out in the valley, stops of note included Anne Amie and Argyle. Anne Amie sits a few miles outside of Carlton. The Wife and I tasted while the tasting room staff allowed The Daughter to crawl around the room unfettered. Anne Amie’s Pinot Gris was rated best in Oregon by the New York Honkin’ Times. After tasting it, I agreed. Their Pinot Gris is blended with grapes from several different sites to give it a rounder, softer feel than one often finds in a Pinot Gris. This one has it all: fruit, acid, floral, and there is some wine in there too…

Notice no Maryland on the list.

Besides being home to the Argyle Winery tasting room, the Town of Dundee also lays claim to the biggest traffic bottleneck in the valley. Oregon Route 99W goes from four lanes to two and the traffic frustrates both locals and tourists alike. Fortunately we watched all this unfold form the safety of the Argyle Winery front porch. Argyle’s flight took you through three levels of their Pinot Noir and tossed in some of their fantastic sparkling wines. Theirs was the most sophisticated and Napa-like of the tasting rooms we visited. Nice, polished operation.

In total, we were floored by the quality we found in and around the Willamette Valley. Oregon and go wine for wine with almost any region in the world and when considered on a price-to-quality ratio, the region is a treasure of good wine and good times. It’s not just Pinot Noir either. Syrah and Cabernet (what Oregonian’s call “warm weather grapes”) thrive around Southern Oregon and the wineries pour a range of everything. Willamette Valley is a must visit for wine lovers.

The Carlton Inn
648 West Main Street
Carlton, OR 97111
(503) 852-7506

The Horse Radish
211 West Main Street
Carlton, OR 97111
(503) 852-6656

Anne Amie
6580 NE Mineral Springs Road
Carlton, OR 97111

Argyle Winery
691 Highway 99W
Dundee, Oregon 97115

Special offer from our sponsors at WineChateau.com: Get 50% off shipping when you buy 6 or more bottles of Italian wine with coupon code “vino08″

So like any good blogger I dove right into the search and come up with this summary of Maryland liquor laws from gobyo.com

BYO is apparently permitted in licensed restaurants, provided the wine brought in is covered by the restaurant’s license.

Further, BYOB is explicitly allowed in Baltimore City even if the restaurant in question does not have a liquor license.

Read more of gobyo.com’s research here.

Winesdays, five wines featured on each Wednesday, are still around but the price has gone from $10 to $15 for five tastes. Our bartender remarked that the wines are of better quality, though, so that may offset the price increase. The tastes are always generous anyway, so you’re getting your money’s worth. This is coming from a guy who usually thinks he paid too much for tastings, remember.

Food is good, nice fresh Italian selections. I had a panini, and The Wife had spaghetti in Bolognese sauce. Everything was seriously fresh: the cheese, the pasta, the bread. Great, authentic flavors.

But let’s get down to business:

The wines aren’t prices at standard restaurant markup. They are priced at retail.

I couldn’t believe it. Glancing at the wine list, I saw prices in the teens and I started internally grumbling about by-the-glass prices in the double digits. I scanned and scanned and decided I would just have a beer.

But, the prices were bottle prices, not prices by-the-glass.

The glass prices are all $7 or $8, but you can get a whole bottle of real wine for $12 with your dinner. Guys, no longer do you have to shop around for fixed-rate financing on your wine with dinner. You can dine with dignity, have a bottle of Chianti, and pay with cash. I recommend the $16 Kermit Lynch imported Cotes du Rhone.

This was enough to push Taverna Corvino onto my “happy” list of local restaurants. Good food, friendly and helpful staff, a TV in the bar area to watch the Orioles get crushed, and cheap wine prices. I hope this place sticks.

Taverna Corvino
1117 South Charles St
Baltimore, MD 21230
(410) 727-1212
http://www.tavernacorvino.com/

This is something I’ve been gnashing my teeth about for some time and seeing a $60 wine from Maryland in print on a wine list was the tipping point for me. This is out of control.

Maryland wines are too expensive, and they aren’t good enough to justify the prices.

I’m not blaming my beloved Woodberry Kitchen for this. They could do no wrong. They served me luscious Torrontes by the glass and polished it off with heavenly Malbec, just a touch of vanilla oak on the nose rolling into stiff, solid red wine backbone. Yum.

If the winery is offering the bottles at $35 retail, the restaurants standard double markup would put the wine between $60 and $70. Woodberry Kitchen is right in the ballpark. Hats off to them for making a real effort to offer real local wines. This doesn’t make it not absurd.

So, we turn to Maryland wineries. Take the last three wineries I visited. Each had at least one wine listed over $30, some had more. One wine was over $40. Forty dollars, FORTY dollars…. for a first-ever release with no scores or glowing reviews from media, stuffy wine critics, or silly bloggers. Further, the wine isn’t very good. I’ll forgive some weaker local juice if it costs around $15. Get over twenty dollars, and we better be getting good. Push forty, and we better be talking about some good wine. Regarding Virginia wineries and their wine pricing, I’ve been jousting at that windmill for some time.

Here’s the problem: The wineries are selling out of the wines. They would be stupid to set the prices any lower.

So the blame lies with you, Maryland wine consumer. I understand you want to buy local. I understand you want to drink local juice. I feel it too. But, c’mon, this is too much. Good wine doesn’t have to be that expensive. Bad wine doesn’t have to be that expensive, either. Go grab something off the shelf for $15. Boordy and Fiore are good plays locally, and there are a million other good wines out there in that range. Spread your wings and wait for the quality to catch up.

I stoped by before opening today and perused the bar menu, a range of appetizers in the $6-$9 range, as well as cheese plates (three cheeses $11); dinners reportedly hover around $16-25.

Grape Leaves Online reports that Church Street Cellars in Vienna, Virginia has Enomatic machines to facilitate your wine tasting needs. If you haven’t used an Enomatic machine before, you’re in for a good time. An Enomatic is a big box with 5-10 wine bottles inside it, each with its own button and price. You pay for credit on a card, then slide the card into a machine and press a button corresponding to your choice. Your card is charged per the price of the taste and one ounce of wine goes into your glass and you drink up. Rinse, and repeat.

Last time I was in New Orleans, I spoke with the owner of WINO about the machines, many of which he had just set up in his store. He said that it wasn’t easy getting them past the liquor licensing board given that people are serving themselves and the good government magistrates were concerned that people would drink too much. We both shared our wonder that this was happening in New Orleans where public belligerence isn’t illegal, it is required. So kudos to the VA liquor board for allowing this to happen.

Junior’s, the Federal Hill restaurant that I held near and dear to my heart for their Winesdays, has closed. It has been replaced by what looks to be a culinary batting cage. Test Kitchen? What is a Test Kitchen? The big banner over the doors that offers another clue.

So the new spot will be called Corvino. Great.

I liked Junior’s because there isn’t much of an offering up uppity wine restaurants in Federal Hill. Bicycle is okay, Corks is okay too. Junior’s was fun because they poured good (and bad) wines but their staff was friendly and nice and there was always a light atmosphere at the bar. The dining area, evidently, had an atmosphere that was too light for profits.

So Corvino becomes the latest upscale restaurant to occupy that space. Vespa and Junior’s both bonked, so I wonder what Corvino has up its sleeve to make it think the results will be any better. I hope it works out.

A few blocks away, the bar formerly known as Charlotte’s is getting a full workup. Midnight Sun has the scoop that the new owners are giving it a face lift and a renovation.

It’s going to be a bar/restaurant called The Reserve, and will feature upscale pub food, outdoor seating and occasionally some low-key live music, according to co-owner Andrew Dunlap.

There was mention of wine being served as well, though no indication of how much emphasis will be placed on the wine list.

Last week, The Wife and I walked down to Charles Street and into Juniors for their Chef’s Wine Tasting Dinner. These sorts of things, where you sit in a small group with the winemaker and have a multi-course meal pared with his wine, are somewhat unique to the area (If they aren’t unique, I certainly have not been notified of them). They’re a great chance to learn about wine and food because you usually have the chef showing off his best stuff and paring skills, and you have the winemaker there to tell you about the wines. Sometimes, like in this case, the distributor tags along to talk about production, availability, price, and to remind the Maryland patrons that they’ll have better luck flying to the moon than having the wine shipped to their door.

Sorry, had to get that in. I mat the importer, Steve Ward, and he was a very nice guy.

Onward!

Juniors got the chance to show off their new Executive Chef Anthony Marini. Co-owner Jeff Minderlei (the Junior in Junior’s) said that Marini is going to take advantage of a lot of freedom, switching up the offerings and changing the menu frequently. The courses at this wine dinner were very good and show the chef’s intent to take the restaurant to a higher level. The crowd favorites were the 15 hour braised pork belly with tomato compote and arugula, and the chocolate bread pudding with basil ice milk. The pork was cooked so that it just fell apart in your mouth, so tender. The bread pudding was off-the-map fantastic.

Winery owner Mario Pardini spoke about each wine as it came out with its accompanying course. He was gracious enough to answer questions and show pictures of the vineyards where the grapes were from. I haven’t been down to Mendoza yet, but it looks as picturesque as anywhere in the world.

My notes on the wines that were served:

2005 Atonietti Sparkling

Not bad. Not nearly as many bubbles as you’d find in a Champagne. Easy to drink, not bitter or tart.

2007 Ave Torrontes

Smelled explosive. Simply amazing aromas in the glass. One of the best floral bouquets of any wine I’ve ever had. Tasted almost glassy or slick, honeysuckle. Good acidity.

2008 Ave Malbec Rose

Rested on the skins for 24-36 hours only. Glowing candy red color, like a Jolly Rancher. Tasted pretty big for a Rose. This would dominate a Pinot.

Ave used actual fruit to make the Rose, not the must from other wines as some wineries will do. The Rose was good but the Jolly Rancher color is going to throw a lot of people. This is a serious Rose, not a blush or sweet wine. Wine being as cerebral as it is, though, a lot of people are going to see the wine and just think it tastes on the sweet side, even though it does not.

2006 Ave Malbec

Deep red. More floral aromas on the nose. Tastes of currant, blackberries, deep fruit. Paring with the risotto not quite perfect. This wine needs something bigger like some flank steak or a gigantic cheeseburger.

The wine was good, and when the distributor said it retailed at The Wine Market for $16, I made it a point to go out and get some. A really nice wine for $16.

2006 Ave Malbec Riserva

600 cases produced. Almost smelled overcooked on the nose, same aromas as its little brother. Very big in the mouth, lots of savor with a nice finish. The wine felt cumbersome, a little out of balance. It’ll be better in a few years.

As the night wore on, the diligent staff and the generous pours combined to make our table of sixteen more social and lively. Of course, it also led everyone to rave about the wines which were indeed praiseworthy even before our inebriation. The evening was well-planned and well-executed in every aspect. Hats off to Juniors for putting together such a fine evening at a very reasonable price. If you haven’t, join their email list to be notified of upcoming diner and get updates on their Winesdays specials.

…makes me happy to live in Baltimore. No snooty wine terms here, hon.