Yet another self-distribution update.

A few updates on self-distribution by Virginia wineries.

First, this year's legislation remains "tabled" and thus will be dead for this year's session. Don't know whether there was any serious attempt to revive it; if there was, it didn't come to anything.

Second, I got an email from an owner of a Virginia website, in response to one of my earlier postings on self-distribution:

Comment about your post regarding your belief that wineries won't go out of business: I'm having to make the decision of whether to sell my house because the winery can't afford to pay me more, and I'm stuck with an ever-growing mortgage payment because of taxes. And I'm sick of working 3 jobs. We are not a profitable business yet, and probably won't be for another year or so. Even using current projections, profitable means a meager margin. That will now be eaten up by the cost of having to set up and support a separate business entity, warehouse, employees, etc., not to mention making less money per case. The threat is real, and although I believe that everyone needs to be able to play with the big boys when you're talking about business, I built our business model on being able to self-distribute. We will probably survive because we're a bit more established--but if you're thinking about starting up a winery and having to go directly to a distributor, good luck. Perhaps they will pass something that will allow a cooperative that can make the alternative more palatable, but I assure you, there was no exaggeration from my end about the gravity of this development to [my winery].

Fair enough. The owner also went on to note that having their wines in retailers and on restaurant lists helps push customers to visit the winery and to their booth at festivals, which are on-site sales that won't have to go through distributors. So losing the ability to self-distribute hurts both direct and indirect sales.

Finally, with the defeat of the bill, there have now been a few articles in the press about losing self-distribution will hurt wineries. It's too bad these articles didn't appear before the legislative session, when they might have done some good.