Good Grape Wine Company

June 28 2006

Why I love Incognito Wine!

I live in Indianapolis, IN

One of the interesting things about the supreme courtruling and the additional state-level rulings is that wine laws arechanging everywhere.

But,I’m not sure who is keeping up with it. Not that it matters, because it seems to be working out okay forconsumers.

Thenet result of the laws and the swirling changes taking place is that theSupreme Court said something to the effect that states cannot prevent wineriesfrom shipping into the state from out of state, if they allow in-state wineriesto ship to customers in-state.

Or,something like that.

Thisopened up a can of worms, because in Indiana the law was very gray regardingwineries shipping in-state and, worse, it wasn’t enforced, so a lot of localwineries had businesses built up around shipping directly to consumers that washalted and then potentially ready to be legislated against allowing—preventingconsumers from receiving wine from in-state wineries and out-of-state wineries.

Thelong story short of it is that Indiana law changed to say, essentially, thatyou can buy wine from any winery that you want to—in-state, or out of state aslong as you first visit the place in person and sign some sort of affidavitthat says you are over the age of 21.

Thisthing is really a non-entity, though, as the local wineries are following this,but the out of state wineries and the out of state wine clubs and commerce sites are selling to Indiana consumers with  seeming abandon. 

Witness:in the last three weeks alone I have received wines shipped from retail in NYCand my wife just signed me up for a wine club for the next six months; Ireceived my first package on Monday.

Thisleads me to why I love Incognito wine.

Myfirst package of two bottles from Gold Medal Wine Club showed up the otherday.

This wine could be absolute swill fit not even for a bad coq au vin and it would still be great! For reasons unrelated to the actual wine.

Though, the wine itself is pretty good.  It’s what I call, “imminently drinkable.”

Thismutt of a wine is made with 30% Mourvedre, 30% Syrah, 20% Petite Sirah, 5%Carignane, 5% Cinsault, 5% Souza.

Made my Michael-David Vineyards in Lodi, this is a Rhone style wine that drinks fairly big.

This$18 wine is slightly herbal, which is funny because I opened it after having aglass of the Buchli Station Pinot Noir (around $18), which was really showing alot (read: too much) vegetalcharacter. So, I open two bottles of wine within an hour of each other toavoid some off notes and they both demonstrate them slightly differently. Nonetheless, the Incognito opened up in theglass and made it a nice, if unassuming, drink that showed some cherry and black raspberry in a discretely oaked package.

But,again, while the Incognito is nice, the real reason I love it is because it is a harbinger of thingsto come in changes in wine shipping laws and really symbolic of the factthat Indiana is no longer incognito in the wine shipping trade.

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