CORNWALL — A renewed push to have wine sales allowed in Connecticut grocery stores has failed.
Last week’s deadline on House Bill 5918 pending before the Connecticut General Assembly’s General Law Committee passed without voting, signaling its defeat.
“It was a hard-fought battle,” said Jean Cronin, executive director of the Connecticut Package Stores Association (CPSA), the largest association protecting the rights of package store owners in the state.
“But was I surprised? No. We put a lot of effort into it, and have literally been meeting with legislators for months,” said the CPSA official.
“We also put in a lot of grass-roots effort so that lawmakers understand the ramifications of the proposal and realize it was not an access issue at all.” Rather, said Cronin,” it was all about grocery stores looking for something else profitable to sell.”
The proposal, known as House Bill 5918, pitted the state’s small package stores against supermarkets in a David and Goliath-type clash. The proposal has resurfaced in various forms for decades.
Last month advocates on both sides of the issue uncorked their most recent arguments during one of this session’s most hotly contested battles at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, during which more than 350 people on both sides of the issue submitted testimony to the General Law Committee, and hundreds of store owners, managers, employees and customers filled the atrium.
The grocery stores maintained that the proposal would provide convenient, one-stop customer shopping. Package stores argued that the proposal represented a major threat to their livelihoods, and that there is no lack of wine availability.
Although H.B. 5918 appears to be dead for the 2023 Legislative Session, the issue is certain to return year after year, said Cronin.
Until then, “We’re not letting our guard down. It’s returned before.”
In the face of this most current defeat, lobbyists for grocery stores and supermarkets said they are confident that once the bill makes it before the full legislature, that it will succeed.
A recent poll commissioned by the Connecticut Food Association revealed that 84 percent of respondents support the sale of wine in grocery stores.
Connecticut is one of only a handful of states that prohibit wine sales in supermarkets. Forty-two states, and Washington, D.C., allow the sale of wine on their shelves.
For now, the owner of one venerable package store in the Northwest Corner is breathing a sigh of relief.
“It is a good feeling, and it seems to have passed for this year,” said Richard Bramley, owner of the Cornwall Package Store.
That said, he noted that there is always a chance that the proposal can resurface via an amendment before the current legislative session ends in early June, and he predicted the fight to stave off wine sales in grocery stores will continue to be an annual threat to his, and other package store owners’, livelihoods.
“There are other priorities the legislature should be looking at,” said Bramley. “I think, in general, people are quite satisfied with the delivery system that is available in most towns, and the widespread availability” of wine.
