{"id":1010,"date":"2018-08-31T14:07:02","date_gmt":"2018-08-31T14:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1010"},"modified":"2018-08-31T14:28:35","modified_gmt":"2018-08-31T14:28:35","slug":"state-liquor-stores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/?p=1010","title":{"rendered":"State Liquor Stores"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a place to visit that you can\u2019t visit anymore, and thank goodness for it.\u00a0 But there is \u00a0some kind of nostalgia involved anyway.<\/p>\n

In many US states and Canadian provinces, sales of alcoholic beverages are restricted to the government.\u00a0 That\u2019s all right because these stores are indistinguishable from the private wine and liquor stores in other states.\u00a0 You walk down aisles with shelves stocked with wines, locally made and from around the world.\u00a0 Just because it\u2019s an SAQ store (Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des Alcools du Qu\u00e9bec) or one run by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board makes no difference.\u00a0 Do you really care if the profits go to the government instead of a private owner?<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t always this.\u00a0 Just because Prohibition ended in the United States in 1933 and in 1920 in Canada (a wartime provision) didn\u2019t mean that drinking alcoholic beverages was universally accepted.\u00a0 In fact, in many places it was considered to be a sin<\/em>.\u00a0 Therefore, various jurisdictions reached the rather contradictory conclusion that if the state or province was opposed to sin it should nonetheless profit from the sinners.\u00a0 But they needed to be well aware that they were sinning.\u00a0 Hence, the state stores were born.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of virginiaplaces.org<\/p>\n

There were no aisles to wander.\u00a0 There were no gaily decorated bottles to see.\u00a0 There was no one to ask for a recommendation of what to serve with dinner that night.\u00a0 What there was was a counter, some civil servants and racks of bottles behind<\/em> the counter, \u201cunauthorized entry prohibited\u201d.\u00a0 There was a price list of the products for sale in a plastic folder on the counter and you asked one of the civil servants to get you a bottle of whatever you intended to buy.\u00a0 These individuals were there to serve you, but it definitely wasn\u2019t service with a smile.<\/p>\n

It became a rite of passage for a teenage boy to enter a state store with a driver\u2019s license clenched in his fist and ask for\u2026what?\u00a0 Something.\u00a0 Anything.\u00a0 Just to prove that he could do it.\u00a0 Drinking from that bottle was almost an afterthought and it was surely not going to be a fine wine from the vineyards of Bordeaux (he probably couldn\u2019t pronounce it, much less spell it).\u00a0 More likely he said, in a tremulous voice, \u201cI\u2019ll have a bottle of Gallo Hearty Burgundy<\/a>, please\u201d. Thus were the wages of sin paid.<\/p>\n

Note that we refer to teenage boys<\/em>.\u00a0 Legally speaking, girls were allowed but that just wasn\u2019t done in those times.\u00a0 In fact, it was a brave grown woman who entered a state store.\u00a0 Moms looked askance if Dads even took their little children into a state store with them. \u00a0Lucie\u2019s Dad took her and she still remembers her Mom\u2019s comments when they got home.<\/p>\n

The whole point was that you were supposed to feel guilty<\/em>.\u00a0 Guilt was the cement that bound the drinker with society, and it was guilt that washed the sin away from the state or provincial coffers.\u00a0 The underlying schizophrenia of such a system had to become unsupportable over time.\u00a0 Eventually, the governments came to realize that they could make more money from sin if they made it seem attractive rather than reprehensible.\u00a0 And so the stores became as they were and still are in their less restrictive neighboring states.<\/p>\n

For those of us who enjoy tasting and drinking wine responsibly, it is hard to think back on these benighted times.\u00a0 But it\u2019s good to do so from time to time, if only to put our pleasant avocation in context of our times\u2026and those gone by.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a place to visit that you can\u2019t visit anymore, and thank goodness for it.\u00a0 But there is \u00a0some kind of nostalgia involved anyway. In many US states and Canadian provinces, sales of alcoholic beverages are restricted to the government.\u00a0 That\u2019s all right because these stores are indistinguishable from the private wine and liquor stores … Continue reading State Liquor Stores<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1010"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1026,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions\/1026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/powertasting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}