On a recent trip to the Berkshires, I stopped into a grocery store to pick up a pre-picnic newspaper and some fruit. When I noticed that they sold wine, and excited by the idea of one-stop shopping (I live in New York where supermarkets don’t), I reached for a bottle and placed it in my cart. When I got to the check out, the cashier informed me that wine is not for sale before noon on Sundays in the state of Massachusetts.
When she noticed my smile morph into a frown, her reply went something like this:
“You can have a vodka tonic in the hotel across the street at 8 am, but you can’t buy wine here until noon. Makes sense, huh?”
Nope, not at all. But wine laws can be pretty bizarre. And on a recent Bottlenotes post, some of the strange laws–like a breathalyzer test used before buying wine in Pennsylvania, and a prison term for Kentucky and Utah residents to have a case shipped from a winery–really make you wonder who the hell is making these laws in the first place…
