ECoast Wines reviews Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyard’s EVOE! at the 2011 Wine Bloggers’ Conference in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was drawn to the label but stayed for the wine.

Also at the conference, VA Wine Diva of Swirl, Sip, Snark enjoyed another Bordeaux-style red, the Black Ankle Vineyards Crumbling Rock, and decides he needs to get up to Frederick soon.

Running Hare Winery, down in southern Maryland, earned a gold medal at the Riverside International Wine Competition (via East Coast Wineries).

Bordeleau Winery, Elk Run Vineyards, Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyards, Romano Winery and Vineyard, did well at the Atlantic Seaboard Wine Association’s 2011 competition (Word document).

Layton’s Chance Winery gets a visit from the Governor.

Carrie Ann Knauer of the Carroll County Times reports Distillery Lane Ciderworks will be debuting at the Maryland Wine Festival next month (you signed up to volunteer, right?).

Delegates Krysiak, Hucker, Ali, Anderson, Aumann, Barnes, Bartlett, Benson, Bobo, Bohanan, Cane, Cardin, Carr, G. Clagett, Conaway, Conway, Costa, Dumais, Dwyer, Elliott, Elmore, Feldman, Frank, Frick, Frush, Gaines, George, Gilchrist, Glenn, Gutierrez, Haddaway, Hecht, Heller, Holmes, Howard, Hubbard, Ivey, Jennings, Kach, Kaiser, Kipke, Kramer, Krebs, Kullen, Lafferty, Lee, Levi, Malone, Manno, McComas, McConkey, McIntosh, Mizeur, Montgomery, Morhaim, Nathan-Pulliam, Niemann, Pena-Melnyk, Pendergrass, Proctor, Ramirez, Reznik, Rice, Robinson, Rosenberg, Ross, Schuh, Shank, Shewell, Simmons, Smigiel, Stein, Stocksdale, Stull, Tarrant, F. Turner, Valderrama, Vallario, Waldstreicher, and Weir

Coverage of the MBBWL press conference yesterday was provided by Matt over at Free State Wine. The major talking points were addressed, as expected.

Part of today’s press conference sought to address retail and restaurant concerns about the impact of shipping wine on their sales. Reports from other states show that direct shipments have no negative effects…

More on all this next week, as well as some info on other wine related bills in the legislature this session.

Hearing is at 1:15
MD Senate Education Health and Environmental Affairs Committee
2 West, Miller Senate Building
11 Bladen St
Annapolis, MD 21401
Map

Full hearing schedule slate can be found on the MD legislature website.

If you’re into Facebook, you can join the cause.

Previous Vinotrip coverage here

Senator Jamie Raskin, coming out of District 20 (the Fightin’ Twentieth!) has introduced what looks to be the same bill that was shot down in 2008. SB-338 (here is last year’s: SB-616) went through the first reading in the Health and Environmental Affairs committee on Jan 29.

Short synopsis – Us Marylanders are trying to pick up the same privilege that Virginians and Washingtonians enjoy: that of having wine shipped to our door.

Publicly, the argument against the bill is hinged on control. People fear that underage kids will order liquor over the Internet and have it delivered to them. Opponents say that the bill does not provide the State of Maryland with enough power to discipline retailers who ship to minors. This, of course, is just just fear mongering and FUD. I don’t have stats on it but I haven’t heard any significant spike of cases in Virginia where minors were getting drunk off of wine purchased over the Internet. Further, both FedEx and UPS require adult signatures when delivering shipments of wine, so at some point some adult will have to take delivery, then pass the wine to the minors.

Privately, the liquor distributors contribute a lot of money toward having these sorts of bills stamped out. They control the pricing of liquor in this state, and they intend to keep it that way. There is no logical argument against this and the only response is to find out how your local legislator feels about it and vote accordingly.

Info page on the bill
Unofficial copy of the bill
Vinotrip coverage of last year’s HB-1260 and the Wine Shipping fiasco: the intro, the fight, the defeat, and the post-mortem from the opposition.