I have lived in Baltimore for 4 years now and in that time I had managed to never have seen an episode of HBO’s highly acclaimed series The Wire. In its fifth season, The Wire is set in Baltimore and is based on the struggles of the Baltimore Police Department with drug dealers and murderers. It is shot on location throughout the city of Baltimore and the surrounding areas. Well last week Kim and I borrowed the first season DVD’s from our friend David Battani and spent the next few days working our way through each episode. Without getting too much into it, the show is quite entertaining and highly recommended. We’re going to start watching season 2 this week as our Direct TV is out (AGAIN!) and it’s been fun to actually watch movies, something we rarely do.

So I bet your wondering what any of this has to do with food and wine, or Wine.Com? Well there is a common code among the drug dealers and gangsters in The Wire that is in fact very real in the city of Baltimore, if you snitch (turn someone in, tell on someone for committing a crime) you get what’s coming to you (two years ago there was a real life video released about this topic among those involved in illegal activity that made the point, here’s an article on it - the no-snitch campaign).

Apparently Wine.Com CEO Richard Bergsund doesn’t watch The Wire.

Over the last week it has been reported by many news sources and confirmed by Mr. Bergsund that Wine.Com was involved in their own little sting operation (Great investigative reporting by Adler at www.vinography.com for breaking this story). Wine.Com had been ordering wines from competitor online retailers (29 to be exact) and having them delivered to the Wine.Com warehouses which were in states that prohibited online wine purchases. Those retailers that did ship wine illegally (including retailers from nine different states) were then reported. Basically, they were setting up the little guy and turning them in for illegal activity. Classy.

Wine.Com contends that it was merely looking out for it’s consumers and the other law-abiding online retailers. Known for significantly higher prices than most other retailers, Wine.Com is trying to rid itself of its competition, forcing consumers to pay premium prices for wine. This hasn’t gone over very well with the general wine public (see Wine Spectator Forums, Vinography, or Fermentation).

I am strongly in agreenence with the masses that wine shipping laws are ridiculous. Here in Maryland, we can’t order wines online. Heck, we can’t go to the grocery store and buy a bottle of wine to have with our dinner (this is a whole other topic!). All this because of the greed and political contributions of the wine wholesalers.

A few other interesting facts:

• Wine.Com is not a member of the Specialty Wine Retailers Association (SWRA) which is the only organized effort directly supporting retailers’ right to ship to consumers nationwide.
• A report has recently been published by the SWRA that shows that wine and spirits wholesalers have given more than $50 million to politicians in the last 7 years (2000-2006). This is an absurd amount of money – all to reduce the availability and increase the prices of wine on the consumer-end.

I’d like to make the point that I am in no way advocating the breaking of the law to ship wine illegally into states where it is forbidden. My position is that Wine.Com should not have taken it into their own hands to act as police on this matter. If they were genuinely concerned for the well being of other reatailers and most importantly, the consumer, they could have taken many different approaches including donating money to the SWRA to help lobby for new wine shipping laws. I would never order wine from Wine.Com because of their ridiculous pricing but if I did, I wouldn’t any more! Mind your own business Wine.Com and quit trying to ruin it for everyone else. In the end, you’re only hurting the consumer.

In the end, the negative PR that this is causing for Wine.Com will end up hurting them as far as consumers are concerned. Why support a retailer who is making it more difficult and more expensive for us consumers to get the products we seek? I guess a snitch deserves what they get!

Finally, what can you, the wine consumer do to help out? Well “Tom Cole”, a member of the Vinography and MarkSquires discussion on the topic has suggested that we consumers work together to raise money to help the SWRA and get these laws changed? What a concept! People taking laws into their own hands and working to get their politicians to recognize what’s best for the people, not the corporations! I commend you on this idea, Mr. Cole and join you (just made a small donation) and ask our visitors to join you as well:

http://www.specialtywineretailers.org/donate.html