No more whining about wine at the grocery store
Old John Barleycorn’s arduous pursuit of Oklahoma consumers crosses another threshold Monday when prudish 3.2 beer becomes a part of history and wine finds legal lodging on grocer’s shelves.
Don’t tell the pastor, but hooch will be available Sundays by county option, liquor will be served not only by the drink but during happy hour.
If it sounds like Oklahoma is throwing itself a weekend frat party bound to turn into a Sunday cookout in need of a holiday for cover, it’s probably because you were born and raised here.
The reality is, the changes to Oklahoma liquor laws coming Monday will at long last move state policy into line with our neighbors. But with change comes disruption, and with disruption comes increased odds of chaos.
Local liquor store owners have been feverishly adding refrigeration for the first time, but talk to them and they will tell you they have concerns. Most pressing are distribution concerns.
The wine we will now be able to legally purchase in grocery stores, convenience stores, and pharmacies adds stops on the supply line. A lot of them.
Longtime retailers like Vance Gregory, at Edmond Wine Shop, worry added stops and the exponential increase of wine deliveries will hamper his ability to offer customer service.
Restaurateurs share those concerns.
The distribution of spirits has long been handled by a couple of large companies. Brokerages, local bird dogs for wine and spirits interests around the world, can now become wholesalers responsible for their own distribution. That means a lot of rookies on the road. We’ve all been rookies.
For the past couple of months, wholesalers and retailers have slowly been draining the 3.2 beer supply. Three weeks ago, I witnessed a couple of guys clear all the beer from the fridge of a Norman convenience store, then throw it in the back of a pickup that was already wellstocked.
Full-strength beer will replace 3.2 beer as the norm, but proliferation might take a sec. Let’s not even get into the demands currently being made on the Alcoholic Beverage Laws Enforcement Commission and those ahead.
And don’t be shocked if Oklahoma consumers are part of the problem. Please reference the definition of Sooners, and note what happened when the 3.2
beer referendum passed overwhelmingly on July 11, 1933.
Gov. “Alfalfa” Bill Murray had to declare martial law and call upon the Oklahoma National Guard to keep an eye on folks waiting on train cars to be delivered the following day. By the time Murray gave the order the afternoon of July 12, locals had crowded into the rail yards where they commandeered suds the instant they were unloaded and drank them on the spot.
The passage of 3.2 beer back in ‘33 got Barleycorn to first base with Oklahoma consumers, but anything beyond that was left to the bootleggers for 26 years.
On Sept. 1, 1959, prohibition was repealed in Oklahoma, Hannibal Shadid, who also had a produce-buyer business he shared with his sister, opened Market Liquorsat the Farmers Public Market downtown. He would later open a small beer tavern named Pancho’s, which Shadid would adopt as his own nickname and proudly brandish at his new location, Pancho’s Liquortown, at the corner of N Meridian and what we used to call NW Highway in the winter of 1971.
We lost Pancho in 2010, but his daughter, Brenda Wilson, still runs the business with the 106th retail liquor license commissioned by the state.
Wilson is thrilled with her new refrigeration and the new humidor she’ll the new law will allow her to unveil next week, but like Gregory and legendary liquor retailer Byron Gambulos, she worries about customer service and fears prices will make their way up to regional averages.
More coverage
Coming this weekend, The Oklahoman will launch continuing coverage of the historic change coming.
I met with Gambulos and Martin Dyer, of Ardmore, for details of the days before and after Oklahoma repeal. Gambulos helped Joe Cannon devise Oklahoma’s model retail package store and Dyer was a freshman senator in 1959.
Both are 91 and apologized for perhaps not remembering things as clearly as they used to.
Don’t worry about senility. Dyer was not only Oklahoma’s 2017 Mayor of the Year, he’s still a practicing lawyer and serves on the city commission. And Gambulos doesn’t make it down to NW 23 and Broadway as often as he used to, but trust me, the man can spin a yarn.
“Now, in the very beginning, you had bootleggers all up and down that river, and the way
it used to go is they put barges out in the middle of the river,” Gambulos told us a couple of weeks ago.
He explained how whiskey-seekers rowed out to the barges, knocked on the door, and laid their money down.
“The door would open, and they’d take the money,” Gambulos said. “Then they put the bottle out another way so they could say they didn’t sell you a bottle.”
Plenty more where that came from in the special coverage from Business Writer David Dishman and me, with video from producer Paige Dillard. The package will take a look at the history of Oklahoma’s liquor laws, the politics it took to change them, what it might mean to the economy, and what changes consumers can expect in stores, restaurants, bars and all the places you forget adult beverages are sold.
The overwhelming nature of State Question 792’s passage is a clear indication the people view any concerns as a tax they were willing to pay for convenient access to wine and full-strength beer.
Passage perhaps indicates a change in the way Oklahoma votes. As repeal attempts failed through the years, records show consumption never did anything
but rise.
As we say farewell to 3.2 beer, here’s a sangria rose recipe ideal to raise in toast.
You can grab fruit and cheap, dry rose at the grocery store, but don’t forget to swing by the liquor store for some brandy and Chambord.
ROSE SANGRIA
1 bottle dry rose
¼ cup brandy
2 ounces Chambord
1 ½ cups raspberries
1 ½ cups quartered strawberries 1 nectarine or peach, sliced 2 tablespoons to ¼ cup simple syrup
12 ounces seltzer water, club soda or mineral water (I love Topo Chico with this recipe)
Ice
Garnish: 1 bunch mint leaves, basil leaves or mint-basil leaves
Combine wine, brandy, Chambord and fruit in a pitcher and let stand one hour.
Add your fizzy water and stir. Stir in 2 tablespoons well. Taste and add the rest if you like it a little sweeter. Top with ice. Alternately, you could fill glass with ice and pour the sangria over it if you think the pitcher will stand a while. Pour drinks and garnish with herbs.