Wine bill should have been passed sooner

It took years of pushing by the wine industry, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and an added day for the 2005 state legislative session, but New York's wineries finally have secured the ability to get their products to out-of-state customers.

The Legislature last week, with the blessing of Gov. George Pataki, passed a law authorizing direct shipment of wine into and out of the state.

New York's existing law had banned such activity, allowing only in-state direct selling to consumers and forcing the state's wineries to go through distributors in order to get their products to out-of-state markets. But most of New York's wineries - including ones in our area - are too small to work with distributors, and so they've been missing out on a potentially vast market - the thousands of people scattered throughout the country who have visited their operations.

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