Cabernet Kings Couldn’t Count!

All together now, Pennsylvania:  Ninety-nine bottle of booze in a box, 99 bottles of booze, blow in a tube, look like a rube, still 99 bottles of booze in a box…

Forget 99 bottles of wine, try 19.  That’s the number of bottles the stumbling Sovereigns of Sauvignon sold in an ENTIRE month through one Giant Eagle wine kiosk in New Kensington.  For those playing along at home, a place you don’t have the freedom to order wine from like other Americans, that’s $101 in monthly sales for the PLCB’s “creative,” “innovative,” and flimsy, flawed and failed fermented fiasco – a paltry peddling of pinot, period!

A big hat tip to Eric Boehm of the Pennsylvania Independent who broke the story last night that uncovers a spokeswoman saying, “the board did not conduct formal research to determine how the public would receive the machines or what level of sales could be expected.”

This is the same agency that has said repeatedly, “The board is looking to bring exactly what customers are saying they want – convenience.”  So you want to give the public what they want, but wouldn’t bother to ask them what they want, just force them to buy only from the government and consume only what the government says you can consume?  Maestro, queue the music!

Despite their liquor lip service, the Charlemagnes of Chardonnay pressed on with taxpayer money anyway, and according to the spokeswoman, the board relied on sales estimates provided by Simple Brands LLC, the kiosk manufacturer, to help give a green light a contract given to Rendell campaign cronies.

Talk about the fox standing outside the henhouse telling you all the chickens are present and accounted for!  And yet, the PLCB continues to ask Pennsylvanians for another crack at being in a business they have no business being in the first place.

If your head is spinning, it’s not the alcohol talking, it’s the facts.  The PLCB should be out of the booze business and no time too soon.  Until then, stay thirsty my comrades.