The Prohibition throwback
There you are, grocery shopping on Sunday, when you decide you'll fix a nice dinner later that day. And, you think to yourself, what's a nice dinner without a glass (or two) of wine? So you scan the wine aisle, paying as much attention to the cool/cute labels as you do the varieties and the vintages, and grab a bottle that intrigues you. Excited about your fresh produce, gleaming cuts of meat and looking forward to the first glass of wine, you load up the conveyor belt. Life is good...
But this weekend-food fantasy comes to a screeching halt when the cashier says, in a loud voice, "We don't sell wine until after 1:00 p.m. on Sunday." OK, so maybe the cashier isn't that loud. Could be that I'm the only one whose face warms just a bit with embarrassment, as if the people behind me in line are shaking their heads and thinking, "Geez... What a lush. She can't even wait a few hours?"
But you're allowed to buy beer Sunday morning, right? Seriously, I don't understand the laws on wine sales in Ohio. Neither do these folks, from the looks of their Web site.
About the photo: Decanter set by Libbey - Provided
posted by Nicci King at 3:10 PM
4 Comments:
at 4:22 PM 
Stepfanie said...
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at 4:23 PM 
Anonymous said...
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at 6:34 PM 
Dianne said...
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at 7:50 PM 
Renee Beaulieu said...
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Post a Comment*That hasn't happened to me, but only because I'm not a morning person. But when I worked the night shift at a newspaper after college, I grocery shopped after work. Cashiers would roll their eyes and tell me they couldn't sell wine again until Sunday afternoon!
Where my mom lives (in a small Southeastern Ohio town), there's no alcohol sales on Sunday coutywide, plus the sheriff bans alcohol sales on church holidays and sometimes the day before. There's finally a decent wine selection at a deli there, but if you don't plan ahead, you've got to drive 30 miles the night before a holiday to get a bottle of vino.
These are just the remnants of old blue laws that were designed to enforce a certain standard of moral conduct on the Christian Sabbath. They are easily repealed if there is enough of an interest in doing so. Northern Kentucky has only recently begun to allow wine and spirits to be sold on Sunday, previously you could only purchase beer. I think most people just regard them as an annoyance. Years ago I worked as a server at an Italian restaurant in KY and I thought people were going to physically hurt me when I told them they could not have wine on Sundays.
Do not even get me started about how ridiculous these types of laws are! It was a dark Sunday that I was denied my margarita at El Pueblo... Earl still shutters at the memory.
The Ohio liquor laws were a very pleasant surprise when I moved here from Connecticut, which does not allow any retail wine or liquor sales, except in liquor-only stores. And those stores are all closed on Sunday, and at 9 p.m. weekdays. No beer sales on Sunday in grocery stores, either. AND the liquor stores are absolutely not allowed to sell any food. The concept of a wine-and-cheese store is impossible there. Remnants of the old Puritan blue laws, kept in place by the liquor-store lobby. So the 1 p.m. Sunday thing here is occasionally annoying, but the situation here is a huge improvement over what I'm used to.
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