Recession isn’t stopping New Mexicans from quaffing local lagers

Nice coverage of how brewpubs and microbrewers in New Mexico are seeing strong growth. NM has many fine beers and its wine industry is also growing. (Nuevo Mexico was supposedly the first location in the New World where wine was produced; Spanish settlers brought grape seeds and winemaking skills here nearly 400 years ago...take THAT California!)

New Mexico wine is one of the most-requested souvenir items at the state's gift shops. Unfortunately, tourists who want to buy New Mexico beer and wine can do so at their hotel or resort's gift shop in most cases. And they can't do it at a gift shop in the ABQ, ROW or SAF airports, either. They can't even find NM beer and wine at shops on the historic plazas in Albq., Santa Fe, Taos, or Mesilla.

No, unlike other states, to find NM beer and wine, a visitor hoping to take home a bottle of wine or a six pack of beer must know and remember to leave the tourist area and go stand in line at an Albertsons, Smith's or a package liquor store. In other words, they need to REALLY want it, enough for it to be worth the hassle to get it. What are the chances?

How much in sales do our state's breweries, wineries, and tourist gift stores lose from the fact that its darned inconvenient for tourists to buy their products in our great state? How much income from liquor excise and gross receipts sales taxes does our state lose...during a critical budgetary era?

The fact is, for a gift shop to be able to sell New Mexico beer and wine, it needs a full-on retail package liquor license. Only problem with that is, the number of those licenses was "frozen" many years ago. The result is that the only way to get the license is to buy one from an existing retailer who is going out of business. Cost? $500,000 and up. No mom'n'pop tourist shop could afford that just to supply a few bottles of wine or beer every day.

Result: compared to other Western states, "souvenir" sales of New Mexico wine and beer to tourists are practically unheard of. And our state's wine and beer industries are therefore growing far more slowly than in surrounding states. Even Oklahoma has more wineries than New Mexico! Yes, I said, "Oklahoma!"

We're working to get the law changed so that small retailers could get a restricted liquor license that would allow them to sell up to 4 bottles (or 4 six packs) of New Mexico-produced beer and wine per day to any one customer. The beer and wine could not be sold chilled, and it could not be consumed on-site. In other words, its specifically targeting tourists who want to buy a few bottles to take home as souvenirs.

Senator Carlos Cisneros, D-Questa, and Rep. Bobby Gonzalez, D-Taos, sponsored a bill to do just that in the 2009 state legislative session. The bill passed the Senate 33-7, but the chair of the House Business & Industry Committee, Debbie Rodella, D-Espanola, wouldn't let it come to a vote in her committee. So the bill died.

We're going to try again in 2010, but the short session requires that only bills sponsored by the governor's office can be introduced.You can read last year's bill at
http://www.nmlegis.gov/Sessions/09%20Regular/bills/senate/SB0403.pdf