The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 7, 2000

Last Friday night, when a packed house of revelers toasted the new year at Le Bec-Fin, nearly 50 extraordinary bottles of wine were absent from the restaurant's celebrated cellar. They were slowly deteriorating in a Pennsylvania State Police evidence bin.

The wines were seized in April 1998, when Liquor Control Board (LCB) auditors and armed state troopers showed up at the restaurant for lunch - without a reservation. They were there not to sample chef Georges Perrier's fabled sweetbreads, but to search through his 4,000 bottles of vins extraordinaires for illegally obtained vintages.

That afternoon raid on Le Bec-Fin, likely prompted by a tip, was just one of more than 13,000 investigations the state police's Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement conducted in 1998.

If the private consumer thinks purchasing wine and spirits within Pennsylvania's State Store system can be a frustrating adventure, look at what a restaurateur, known to the state as a licensee, has to go through.

The wines confiscated from Le Bec-Fin included rare dessert vintages from Chateau d'Yquem and Chateau de Fargues, which would sell for hundreds of dollars each, accumulated over the years by Perrier from private cellars.

According to the LCB, guidelines do not permit restaurants to buy wines from private collectors. Unfortunately for Perrier and other restaurateurs, such fine vintages are rarely available elsewhere.

Even the LCB concedes that buying such wines can be a challenge for restaurants.

"The regulations currently don't permit this," LCB spokeswoman Donna Pinkham said. "If a wine is no longer available on the market and cannot be ordered through the [LCB's] Special Liquor Order process, perhaps a broker might be able to bring it in."

In July 1999, because the restaurant was found guilty of illegal wine purchases and other violations, from improper display of the restaurant's liquor license to failing to notify the board of a change of manager, Le Bec-Fin was ordered to pay a $2,600 fine and $12,400 in restitution to the state. It also was ordered to suspend all operations for two days. Perrier has appealed the decision. No date has been set for a hearing.

According to many restaurateurs, LCB guidelines make life difficult not just for the few owners interested in the rare purchase, but also affect everyday, routine buying practices. Whether it's a 1959 Chateau Margaux, which might cost $500 at auction or up to $1,000 at a retail outlet (if you could find it), or an inexpensive New York State riesling, the state is watching.

Perrier and his lawyer, John Pelino, had no comment on the State Store system. Wine buyers for other restaurants in the area, though, were not so tight-lipped.

"I can't even buy a Sauternes for cooking without special-ordering it," said Rose Parrotta, wine buyer for Buddakan in Old City. "I have to go through wine salesmen for a cooking wine! Silly stuff like that gets you on a regular basis."

"I sympathize with those frustrated by paying more money, but you have to play by the rules. I see no excuse for doing otherwise," said Marnie Old, wine buyer for Striped Bass, Rouge and Fishmarket. "If you're [angry] about it, go out and fight, change the system, vote for someone who wants to improve the LCB. I try to educate my customers on how to change" the system.

The great wines of the world are made in extremely limited quantities and are released onto the market years before they reach their peak. Collectors who purchase these rare wines ideally lay them down to age in temperature-controlled cellars to drink, or sell, after they've matured.

Once these wines are in collectors' hands, they are no longer available, except on the secondary market - through private sales or wine auctions.

While wine auctions are rarely authorized in Pennsylvania, there is a mechanism in place for individuals to purchase wines on the secondary market outside the state, but only for personal consumption.

"Individuals may, with prior arrangements, apply to bring wines into Pennsylvania, but, as they are not allowed to be resold, licensees are not able to take advantage of this provision in the liquor code," Pinkham of the Liquor Control Board said.

While many agree that the State Store system has made improvements, others feel the Pennsylvania LCB still lags behind other states in many crucial areas.

Another common complaint against the Pennsylvania liquor monopoly by restaurateurs and wine buyers concerns price. In Pennsylvania, restaurants pay nearly retail prices for wine and alcohol. The discount for licensees has dropped from 25 percent to 7 percent over the last 25 years.

If a bottle of wine wholesales in New Jersey for $10, it can be sold to either a retail wine shop or a restaurant for $10. Typically, the wine shop will mark it up 50 percent, to $15, and the restaurant owner will double the price, so it sells on the wine list for $20.

In Pennsylvania, the LCB will mark up the $10 wholesale price to, say, $17. A Pennsylvania restaurant, which has no choice but to buy through a State Store, purchases the wine at a 7 percent discount, and then usually doubles the price to patrons to about $32. Consumers who see the same wine selling in New Jersey restaurants for $20 and in Pennsylvania for $32 may assume that the restaurant is gouging the customer.

"It's a matter of perception. I watch the faces of our dining guests reading the wine lists, and you can tell what they're thinking," said Old, the wine buyer for Striped Bass, Rouge and Fishmarket. "It makes it awkward."

Tim Kilcullen, wine buyer for Ristorante Panorama at Penn's View Inn, agrees. "One of the injustices is that a great number of our clients shop out of state and know the prices. They'll see it here for $25. They don't know that I paid $12, but they shop in New Jersey, where they see it sell for $8.99."

High-profile restaurants in other states are often offered price incentives to carry products by certain vintners. This is not done in Pennsylvania. In surrounding states, wine and liquor distributors may deliver their products directly to the restaurant, just as if the establishment were ordering meat or any other provision. Pennsylvania restaurateurs must pick up their own orders from the State Store, or, as many do, hire a delivery service, which further increases their costs.

Old describes the State Store system as unwieldy. "It's structured in such a way that makes it awkward to use."

It's not just multi-starred restaurants complaining. Large-volume hotels and national chain restaurants face similar obstacles. Jack Haggerty, assistant food and beverage director at the Wyndham Franklin Plaza Hotel, calls it "the hassle factor" - the extra paperwork, not merely to order the wine itself, but to process the information twice in order to provide his hotel's parent company with information that would be standardized in other states' systems.

The Dilworthtown Inn in West Chester boasts a 7,000-bottle wine cellar. Owner Jim Barnes says much of that was acquired in the 1970s, when large amounts of fine wine were readily available. "As far as currently replacing those bottles," he said, "it would be extremely difficult. Many items, when sold, are not replaceable simply because they are not available in Pennsylvania."

As many have discovered the hard way, the price of not respecting the laws can be significant.

Which raises the question of what happens to the wines once they're confiscated.

If the licensee is found not guilty, confiscated wines are returned. Otherwise, they're destroyed. In rare circumstances, according to Cpl. Denise Karbowski of the Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement, exceptions can be made and the wine can be donated to area churches.

"Sometimes it takes years for a case to be adjudicated," she said. "Many of these wines require careful storage, and our evidence rooms are not temperature-controlled."

Neither are the LCB's warehouses, but that's another story.

© 1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.