Last week, you might have missed a brief butt important article titled Direct-to-Consumer Shipping and Underage Consumption, penned by Alex Koral, Regulatory General Counsel for Sovos ShipCompliant, and published on WineBusiness.com.
In his pithy write-up, Koral touched on a topic that has been a nettle up my wine-sniffing schnoz for at least the last 14 years: namely, the red herring argument that over-regulating direct-to-consumer wine sales via the USA’s hopelessly outdated and anti-competitive three-tier alcohol distribution system somehow saves our children (tHiNk oF tHe cHiLdReN!!!!) from obtaining illegal access to booze, and if we remove the (very lucrative, to those who are part of it) three-tier disaster, it will somehow send all of our underage kids spiraling into a miasma of lifelong alcohol abuse.
Based on some recent data highlighted by Koral, this herring is looking so red that it might as well be on fire—here’s an excerpt from the article (emphasis mine):
“As the latest Direct-to-Consumer Wine Shipping Report produced by Sovos ShipCompliant and WineBusiness Analytics shows, the DtC wine shipping channel has experienced incredible growth. Since 2013, the channel has doubled in terms of volume shipped (7 million cases shipped in 2023, up from 3.5 million) and almost tripled in terms of value (over $4 billion in 2023, up from $1.5 billion).”
“At the same time, underage drinking across all demographics has fallen to historic lows, according to the 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, as described by the anti-underage drinking advocacy organization Responsibility.org. Per the survey, rates of 12th graders reporting that they consumed alcohol within the last month declined 35% since 2014, and those reporting consuming any alcohol within their lifetimes declined 20%. Since the 1990s, these rates have decreased by much more.”
Summary: DtC wine sales growth over the last decade has been robust, and yet, somehow, our underage youth have somehow, SOMEHOW, not yet managed to take advantage of all of those unattended cases of Côte Rôtie being left on mom’s or dad’s doorsteps! Those lazy-ass kids are actually drinking LESS booze over that same time-frame, presumably because they cannot be bothered to open the boxes and use a corkscrew.
Not only that, but issues with underage access appear to be little more than a rounding error. The article goes on to mention data from another report that included information on more than one million DtC wine shipments (emphasis also mine):
“Indeed, a separate report by Vinoshipper, a major online sales platform for DtC wine shipping, showed that age came up as an issue in 0.15% of DtC purchases run through their site, begging the question of whether the only minors who are attempting to get wine DtC-shipped to them are part of a state agency sting operation.”
The anti-DtC argument that our kids are going to be in danger is utter bullsh*t. Always was.
Cheers!