Back in January of 2003 there was a friendly wager placed between then California Governor Gray Davis and Florida Governor Jeb Bush (pictured to the left) over the outcome of Superbowl XXXVII, a battle between the country’s top two football teams – the Oakland Raiders and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  Of course, in that duel, the Raiders were spanked by the Bucs by a lopsided score of 48 – 21.

One of the items put up in that wager by Davis was a case of Groth Napa Valley Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (some great wine, made by a great vintner and great guy Dennis Groth).  However, it was made public shortly after the defeat of the Raiders that because of some draconian laws put in place by the Florida legislature long, long ago, it was actually a felony to directly ship wine into the Sunshine State.  You see, the distributor lobby in that state actually was able, once upon a time, to pass legislation requiring that wine shipments into Florida must go through a middleman – namely them, the distributors.  It was a government-mandated monopoly for the liquor distributors, and an affront to all wine lovers in Florida, who were legally prohibited from order wine online, or even joining one of those wine clubs at a California winery. 

Upon the revelation of this challenging situation, Governor Davis offered to bring two of the twelve bottles to Governor Bush at their next Association of Governors conference, which he did.  Apparently Florida also restricted the amount of wine an individual consumer could carry back into the state to just two bottles!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.