Save AgriVino! Abolish OLCC!

It has just been reported that Agrivino is going to close its doors in early July, due to the narrow interpretation of certain liquor control laws that the Oregon Liquor Control Commission has adopted. They are saying that AgriVino's high-tech Enomatic system is illegally allowing "self-pour" by customers.

AgriVino was planning to provide a very high-tech system for dispensing tastes. Economatic is "state-of-the-art wine dispensing and preserving system," which allows the dispensing of single tastes from wine bottles without exposing the wine to air. Instead, carefully measured one-ounce quantities are pushed out by argon, a noble gas that does not react chemically with wine, into the customer's waiting wine glass.

The problem is that the customer was supposed to pay at the front desk, receive a card, and use the card to sip wine until the money ran out. However, the cashier did not physically handle each pour; the computerized system did this. No can do, says OLCC.

This despite the fact that the central computer was keeping track of the number of pours for each person and would stop delivering when it felt that the customer was drinking too fast. At the price of a sip, this strikes me as a pretty academic concern, but they made the effort. In the real world, this would be among the best regulated and least excessive environments for drinking wine in Oregon.

OLCC wants us to believe that they are forced into this position by ORS 471.360(b), which they say prohibits "self pour" by customers. If you read the statute, you'll see that it says:

(b) No licensee of the commission shall permit any person to mix, sell or serve any alcoholic liquor for consumption on licensed premises unless such person has a valid service permit issued by the commission.

Notice that the statute forbids any unpermitted person to serve liquor. It does not say that, at every step, a permitted person must be taking part. In restaurants, the waiter does not pour every glass of wine. In a tavern, the waitress will almost never pour from the pitcher of beer.

Clearly, OLCC does not require a permitted person to physically take part every time an alcoholic beverage flows from a container into a glass, but they are insisting that AgriVino do this, even though it would destroy the efficiency that makes it possible for them to offer the public such wonderful wines at reasonable prices.

This is not over.