Perhaps the primary reason consumers benefit by access to out-of-state products is that the traditional three-tier system that puts products on the shelves in most states is terrible at providing consumers with choices.
Consider the state of Texas.
In the past 24 months, the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission, which overseas alcohol sales and distribution in the state, approved the sale of 27,500 wines for sale in Texas. The majority of those wines are made in the United States by the wineries located in a variety of states.
But consider this. In that same time period, the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau approved 140,000 wines for sale in the United States…and those are just the imported wines the TTB approved in that 24 month period.
That means that there are more than 100,000 wines approved for sale in the United States in the past two years that consumers in Texas have absolutely no access to unless they are are able to buy and have shipped to them wines from out-of-state wine stores—the only places those 100,000 wines absents from the Texas market could possibly be found.
This situation put the lie to the claim often heard by opponents of wine shipments by out of state retailers that the three-tier system provides consumers with “unprecedented” choice. In fact, compared to what is available in the U.S. marketplace as a whole, the Texas three-tier system provides a nearly unprecedentedly pitiful choice of products.