The Second Wave

The US alcohol industry is now well into the second wave of litigation to sort out what the industry will look like in the future. This new wave of post-Granholmian lawsuits, over 30 in all, seem to focus on two common provisions in state alcohol codes that the direct-shippers believe are anticompetitive: required face-to-face transactions and state volume caps which dictate producers who can self-distribute.At the time of the Granholm decision, 26 states allowed direct shipping of wine to consumers.