I have been hiding under a rock for some time, so I somehow missed the controversy about Illinois banning wine shipments from out-of-state retailers. Fortunately, I happened upon At First Glass, a great wine blog, that blogged about the issue.

I’m sorry to hear that Illinois has joined the nightmare that I have found myself in for some time, being a resident of the alcohol-hostile Pennsylvania.

Tom Wark over at Fermentation wrote an aptly titled blog entry, “Getting Bent Over in Illinois“.

At first I thought that maybe people were over-reacting. Sure, it sucks, but it didn’t appear to me that it was unconstitutional. My guess was that if you couldn’t have wine shipped from out of state, you probably could not have shipped within the state either. You certainly cannot here in PA. It appears that I was mistaken though, and it does make you wonder how this does not violate the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. I’m sure that, eventually, SCOTUS will tell us how.