WCV-BS

How local news carries water for the liquor lobby

Uncorked by Thor Iverson

Local news sucks. Not, I suspect, the words you expected to see lead off a wine column. But if you watch local TV news (other than NECN, which is still pretty good), you know that the sensationalism and hyperbole of the "reporting" is exceeded only by the inane patter of the anchors. It's enough to drive a person to drink (I'd suggest red zin).

Click here for a rundown of wine tastings, dinners, and events.

Even so, I was surprised to catch one particular consumer-affairs report that aired on Channel 5 last month. The subject was, of course, wine. Was it a public airing of one of the new studies linking moderate wine consumption with lowered cholesterol, reduced risk of heart disease, and the stayed onset of Alzheimer's? Of course not. Instead, it was a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am shocker on the evils of the direct shipment of alcoholic beverages.

Remember, I warned you back in December that this story was going to make the news this year. And I guess it could have been worse: the report could have been on Channel 7, where they would have linked it to Libyan death squads or something equally horrible (complete with graphic MTV-style video). Then again, what aired was bad enough . . . and was a pretty lousy piece of reporting.

The core of the piece was a classic "sting," engineered by a local police department, in which a minor was instructed to purchase alcohol online. Now right away, this should set off hype alarms in any sensible person. Liquor, kids, crime, and the Internet . . . one can almost imagine a producer salivating over the chance to link those four hot-button news topics (sadly, they couldn't shoehorn drugs or sex into the report, but I'm sure they gave it some thought).

Of course the minor received some alcohol in the mail, which led WCVB's reporter to intone: "Beer. Tequila. Wine. All the ingredients for a teen drinking party." Wine? Right. I remember those illicit high-school wine benders, sitting around sipping Champagne while talking about the possibility that rain would damage this year's Chianti harvest.

But actually, the sting itself wasn't so bad. Though I think the prohibitionistic attitude of this country is insane and self-destructive (compare our rate of alcoholism to that of countries where wine-drinking by kids is normal, even encouraged, and you'll see what I mean), I can understand why children shouldn't be able to order alcohol online.

The problem is that the equation being sensationalized here -- minors+alcohol=tragedy -- diverts attention from the actual issue. Almost lost in Channel 5's breathless report was this statement: "It also happens to be against the law for any company to ship liquor into Massachusetts directly to a consumer." In other words, the activity in question is illegal for everyone, including a child's parents and grandparents. But Channel 5 was so engaged with "protecting children" that nobody bothered to ask why that would be so. Then again, Grandpa Bob illegally ordering a case of Bud over the Net isn't a shocking, tabloid-style story, is it?

The beating of the child-protection drum is a favorite tactic of the liquor lobby, which is comfortably protected by the current laws against out-of-state mail order. In fact, when New York's attorney general operated a similar sting, the ensuing press conference was openly cosponsored by the national wholesalers' lobby.

There's no way to know if national or Massachusetts wholesalers were behind the WCVB report, but their interests were certainly well served by all the hyperbole. The problem of shipping alcohol directly to children is a very easy one to solve, if one can fight clear of all the handwringing nonsense: retailers must require their shippers to obtain proof of age, and the shippers must refuse shipment without it. It's that simple. After all, if a bar sold beer to a five-year-old, we'd blame the bar, not the brewer, for failing to check ID.

Unfortunately, the real losers here aren't kids. Any 15-year-old organized enough to (1) order alcohol far enough in advance to have it arrive before a party; (2) have it shipped at a time when his parents won't intercept it; and (3) have the charge show up on a credit-card bill his parents won't see, has a bright future in the CIA, not in teenage drinking. The losers, as always, are the wine drinkers, who are still prevented from purchasing any wine not available via the Massachusetts system.

In the end, it's up to all of us to make our voices heard. We can reject the false child-protection claims of the liquor monopolists and demand a free wine trade. Or we can continue to let the liquor distributors, backed by misleading reports like the one Channel 5 aired, work to relegate healthy wine enjoyment to the fringes of acceptable behavior. Puritans might fear that someone, somewhere, might be having fun . . . but they can rest assured that it's on its way to extinction here in Massachusetts.

---

In other depressing news, geriatric fossil Senator Strom Thurmond is rather exercised about the new wine labels (who knows, maybe he even registered a pulse over the matter). Last month, federal regulators came to their senses and allowed a companion label to the dire health warnings required for all wines in the US, this one encouraging people to consult their doctors about the role of wine in a healthy diet and lifestyle. This was too much for Thurmond, who not only wants to repeal the label law but also wants to slap a new national tax on alcohol. Of course, mention tobacco and the Southern senator gets real quiet, real fast. I wonder why?

---

Finally, a hoot of derision for the Boston Globe, whose food critic Alison Arnett recently wrote about restaurants in the Lebanon, New Hampshire, and Woodstock, Vermont, area. There was nothing wrong with her appraisal of the food at the three establishments she mentioned; in fact, I thought it was pretty spot-on. No, what rankled was her review of Simon Pearce Restaurant in Quechee, Vermont. The restaurant's wine list at any given time can be as long as 40 pages. That's right, 40. It's one of the most remarkable wine lists in New England and is the reason a lot of diners make the trip to Simon Pearce in the first place. To ignore it would be akin to ignoring the sushi at Ginza or the tapas at Dalí; a disservice to the restaurant and to the review's readers. So did the Globe review even mention its existence? Of course not.

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine@phx.com.

---

The Uncorked archive

---