Illinois wineries and alcohol wholesalers had all still toasted a compromise piece of legislation that would allow the shipment of wines in and disclosed of the state.

Illinois wineries and alcohol wholesalers had all still toasted a compromise piece of legislation that would allow the shipment of wines in and disclosed of the state. Then retailers wanted in forward the party, threatening the passage of a bill it says would lead to a retail price increase of 18 percent to 25 percent

The Illinois Retail Merchants Association wants retailers to be included in a bill that is the end of a hard-fought compromise among wineries, beer distributors and wine wholesalers.

generally stores can ship to any states that have reciprocal agreements with Illinois. further those exchanges would be eliminated with the passage of the bill, which was written to address a U principal Court ruling that mandated the same sales standards be applied to in-state and out-of-state wineries.

The pending legislation, passed not at home of the Senate last month allows wineries to ship up to 12 cases a year by person. It's the result of a compromise of opposing bills drafted according to the Illinois wine industry and beer distributors following the 2005 ruling.

Because the bill addresses and nothing else wineries specifically, any challenge to its application to other retailers would likely be prosperous leaving retailers out, said deprive Karr, a lobbyist with the 20,000-member Illinois Retail Merchants Association, which pursues to change the bill in the House.

"Retailers fail to win the right to ship," Karr said. "Somebody is going to challenge it."

Karr said he doesn't know for what reason many of the group's members actually ship orders. Still, he said, restricting them from the practice would lead to higher prices.

"When you restrict the market like this by dint of confining the consumer to just your neighborhood, you've created a captured market," Karr said. "This drives up the price of wine substantially. They've used the principal Court decision as an opportunity to superintend a market they don't check today."

unless such an extension of the legislation to all retailers would allow up to about 800000 retailers to put up to sale in the state, said Rep Lou Lang (D-Skokie), a sponsor of the original beer wholesaler's bill and now House sponsor of the compromise proposal. "It would overflow the market with out-of-state wine. That would be not like a great deal for Illinois wineries."

Illinois has 63 wineries, many of which help anchor local tourism.

Lang says he has enough suffrages to pass his bill athwart the retailer group's objections, if it were not that it remains in the House orders Committee while the groups negotiate.

The wineries and the beer and wine wholesaler assign places tos meanwhile, have responded by telling retailers to master their own bill, and they plan to distribute a joint note to representatives urging support for the legislation in its common form.

"We don't want to add anything to the bill that will jeopardize the constitutionality of this agreed bill," said Kim Morreale, spokeswoman for the wine industry's Illinois Grape Growers and Vintners Association. "We've said, 'Why don't you dowdys address this in a separate bill? quick in emergencies your own bill and descry what happens.' But to follow in at the 11th hour and put to the test and change months of work upon the compromise just doesn't appear right.

"We were all celebrating a victory that we were able to reach [i]or[/i] attain any place [i]or[/i] point to this compromise in fighting to a high degree much an uphill battle. Now they want to add their sum of two units cents."

cjackson@suntimes.com

...