Story Indiana, Story Indiana, Story Indiana, Wine’s Home Sweet Home*

What do the largest county fair in the USA, Rock star John Mellencamp, and the newest Miss America have in common? It’s Jackson County, Indiana. Seymour is the largest city in that lucky county. And the largest wine and spirits store in Seymour reports that wine sales are surpassing beer sales. Well, well, well. The Hoosier State rides again!

Now this factoid should alert you to an important fact: wine is alive and well in rural communities in Mid-America. This is probably not something that is tracked assiduously by Nielsen or IRI, but it is one of the facts that are fueling the growth of the wine industry in the Midwest.

Want to see for yourself? Then your closest-in-time opportunity is the Indiana Wine Fair, held April 25, 2009. You can spend a leisurely Saturday afternoon sampling Indiana wines in the historical and bucolic setting of Story, Indiana. Story is a 19th Century village founded in 1851 that now includes Indiana’s oldest country Inn, charming cottages, and a world-class restaurant.

Proprietor of the Story Inn (and in fact, the owner of the entire village) is Rick Hofstetter, a retired-from-the-ratrace lawyer. He and Allen (Ole) Olson, faithful writer of the Blog Hoosier Wine Cellar, have been working their butts off to pull this festival together and it is now in its seventh year. It’s a labor of love.

Virtually every Indiana winery participates in this event, with tastings taking place rain-or-shine under a huge white tent, and a bevy of independent tasters get hard at work judging wine.

“Our judges are all wine consumers, as opposed to wine professionals. These are people who use wine, know a lot about it, but are not in the trade,” explained Ole. “We’ve done this on purpose, because we want our Indiana wineries to know what consumers think about their wines. After all, consumers are the ones who do the buying.” Wines are judged in seven categories: dry white, sweet white, dry red, sweet red, dessert wine, non-grape wine, and Best of Show.

The day before, on Friday, April 24, Story Inn hosts Wine and all that Jazz, a musical gala that features awards to the wineries, tasting of Indiana's finest wines in each category, and a full buffet dinner. Quite a value at $50, and proceeds go to benefit Brown County Citizens Scholarships. The day after, Sunday, April 26, you’ll want to stick around for this: Hoosier Cuisine Gone Wild! This Black-tie-optional-dinner features the Gold Medalists in each wine-judged category, with food pairs matched to authentically Hoosier cuisine. $100 per plate, and again, proceeds to benefit Brown County Citizens Scholarships.

Indiana wineries need to tip a hat to Rick and Ole. They are working hard to promote the industry and it is strictly an eelymosynary effort. But did I mention that the Story Inn has the finest wine cellar in Southern Indiana? And that Ole is spearheading Vinsense, a recently-formed wine advocacy group fighting an uphill battle to convince the Indiana Legislature to change the law regarding direct shipping from producer to consumer.

As for the newest Miss America, it’s 22-year old Katie Stam, who lives not far from Story, IN. She is also Indiana’s first Miss America, and to hear Ole talk, the folks aroundabout are almost as proud of that as they are the great wines Indiana is now producing.

Photo credit Miss America to LugaLuda Blogs

*(apologies to Music Man)

Indiana Gets Petitions Underway to Free The Grapes

Indiana attorney Lisa Hays Murray is not your run-of-the-vine lobbyist. She's genuinely interested in helping her clients in the state's wine industry get to the place that they can grow their businesses through internet sales and out-of-state shipping. To wit, her recent activities, best seen on the website http://www.hoosiersforwineshipping.com/

Although the site includes information about Indiana wineries and legislative initiatives, in my opinion the most important feature is a petition for consumers to sign and join the Free Trade cause.

Once they've done this -- and Lisa suggests an all-out effort by wineries including putting a link on their websites, and getting employees, family members, Wine Club members, and visitors to tasting rooms involved -- then those who sign the petition will get a prompt to e-mail their Hoosier legislators at key times in the legislative process. The website makes this easy through its "VoterVoice" component.

"With your help, this will be a very successful grass roots tool and further allow us to educate the Indiana legislators about why they should enact free trade legislation," she wrote to wineries.

Lisa works not only hard, but smart. "I copied this idea –with their permission—off of the retailers’ “Hoosiers for Beverage Choices” website. I used the same webmaster, etc. The retailers have been extremely successful in garnering over 15,000 folks to sign their website petition—10,000 signed up shortly after a media blitz last fall. And CVS collected 15,000 more! " Her goal is to get 10,000 signatures.

With that Hoosier determination in play (Go Pacers!)(Go Nappanee Bulldogs!), they will.

Freeing the Grapes in Indiana: Vinsense Provides an Additional Voice

In late February I met with Allen Dale (Ole) Olson, a retired federal civil servant, wine consultant and wine writer (see his blog HoosierWineCellars). Ole has become upset enough with the archiac beverage laws in Indiana to form a group named Vinsense. And he's recently jumped through the hoops to become a registered lobbyist so he can talk to Indiana legislators about why Indiana consumers (over 21 of course) cannot purchase wines freely.

Ole hosted the annual meeting of Vinsense at the Brown County Winery in Nashville, Indiana at the end of February. I am very impressed at the activities of this small but dedicated group, and think that their goal of revealing contributions to Indiana legislators by groups opposed to freeing the grapes is a good one. Vinsense itself operates on a small-but-growing budget that is augmented by tremendous passion and righteous indignation, and BRAVO! I'm rooting for them!

You can read more at the Vinsense website, CLICK HERE. But a quick summary provided by Ole, who is president of the group, is below:

"THE WHAT AND WHY OF VINSENSE: VinSense, Inc. is an Indiana-based wine consumer advocacy group of approximately 3,000 members formed in the early spring of 2007 to work toward the passage of legislation to allow Hoosiers to use modern communications media – internet, phone, fax, mail – to order wine directly from wineries.

VinSense draft legislation resulted from recognition that the existing three-tier system denies Indiana residents access to some 95% of all wines produced in the United States because Hoosiers are required by law to purchase wines only from licensed retail stores or from wineries they have personally visited and which are properly licensed for such shipping. Retail stores, in turn, can sell only wines made available to them by licensed wholesale distributors.

This means that Indiana consumers have had their wine choices pre-selected for them at two levels – wholesale and retail. With nearly 10,000 new wines entering the nation’s markets every year, it is impossible for wholesalers to procure, stock, and offer for sale a substantive percentage of them. Same for retailers.

Using data from a 2003 study by the Federal Trade Association, VinSense calls attention to the fact that the 35 states allowing direct shipping have reported no problems with either underage drinking or collection of appropriate taxes related to direct shipping. That study disproves the most common arguments used by opponents of direct shipping.

VinSense vigorously opposes underage drinking and just as vigorously supports the state’s right to collect appropriate taxes on direct sales. Both issues are addressed in the draft legislation submitted via Senator Brent Steele (R-Bedford) to the Legislative Services Agency. That legislation was tabled by the Senate Public Policy Committee when the President Pro Tem ruled that no alcohol-related bills would be heard during the 2009 session of the General Assembly.

The incoming Chair of the Legislative Study Committee on Alcoholic Beverage Legislation has promised to include VinSense in hearings planned for summer 2009."