New Hampshire Is The Best State In The US For Wine Drinkers
According to new data from the American Wine Consumer Coalition's 2013 report card (first spotted by Washington Post), New Hampshire tied with six other top-scoring states for the #1 spot, including California, District of Columbia, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
New Hampshire in particular was touted as the best in the nation by the report due to its lenient laws and access to wine. The state allows winery-to-consumer shipping, retailer-to-consumer shipping, Sunday sales of wine, grocery stores wine sales, and BYO/Corkage in restaurants.
The government doesn't control wine sales either in New Hampshire, which means there is free market competition resulting in lower prices.
The states that scored the lowest on the list were mainly in the South and Midwest. Alabama, Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Utah all received F grades and were the least friendly for wine drinkers due to their numerous restrictions and lack of access.
New York received a D+, mainly because it both prohibits wine in grocery stores, and doesn't let consumers ship their wine from wine retailers.
The report graded the fifty states and the District of Columbia based on consumer access issues. States received points for leniency in wine-availability laws, and earned more points for more important issues, such as allowing direct to consumer shipments of wine to consumers by wineries than by allowing wine sales in grocery stores. You can read more about the methodology here.
Below is a map of all 50 states' grades.
