How the three-tier system ruined my birthday

My wife wanted to surprise me this year for my birthday, and order me a bottle of Chateau La Fleur, the Vintage would represent my birth year.

Unfortunately, my wife discovered that ordering wine is not as easy as ordering shoes on Amazon.

My wife went to numerous Illinois fine wine retailer sites, went to Binny’s, the retailer with the most vast array of products in Illinois, and scoured the internet for a retailer that sold the Chateau La Fleur vintage she desired.

To her delight she found a bottle of the specific vintage of Chateau La Fleur!

But then reality hit her! She could only locate this special bottle being sold by retailers in California and Washington. Being the wife of a liquor lawyer, she knows all to well that Illinois will not allow out-of-state retailers to ship wine to Illinois customers.

Too many people wine represents many things, it has religious, sentimental, and celebratory meaning. Wine is important in life.

Unfortunately, the liquor regulatory system in Illinois often times shuts off wine representing these special meanings.

All my wife wanted to do was to purchase this special bottle for my birthday. Unfortunately, her good intentions were thwarted by an out dated regulatory system, which does not allow consumers access to the product they desire.

In the liquor regulatory system, laws of supply and demand that rule the free market are replaced by laws that put a wall around the state  and restrict and often times prohibit commerce from other states.

Somehow I fail to see how refusing to allow my wife to purchase a special birthday wine for me, protects the health, safety, and welfare of the Citizens of Illinois. Or that society would be harmed by a bottle of Chateau La Fleur not available in Illinois being shipped in from California.

Until these laws are changed, we will run into these absurd situations and worse they will continue to repeat themselves thousands of times.

I guess the solution is just to surrender go to the store and buy a bottle a Blue Nun, because at least that goes through the Illinois Three-Tier system