"Corkage" Re-Enters Ontario Dialect

To my surprise, the Ontario government has passed the "bring your own wine" legislation. I really expected this one to die on the order paper, but I'm delighted to be proven wrong:

The passing of Ontario's bring-your-own-wine legislation puts the province in a club that includes Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec and New Brunswick, which already have similar programs.

The changes update the province's liquor laws and give licensed restaurants new choices to entice patrons to visit more often, Consumer and Business Services Minister Jim Watson said when he introduced the bill earlier this summer. But the bring-your-own-wine program won't be in effect during this holiday season.

Wine drinkers will have to wait several weeks until restaurants receive all the necessary approvals from the government.

It will be up to each restaurant to decide if it wants to offer the choice, and how much they will charge.

That last paragraph is going to be the stumbling block. Some restaurant owners will be worried that they'll lose too much business (because of the obscene mark-ups they have on their own wines), so even if they apply for and receive all the necessary "mother may I" permits, they'll probably set their corkage fee astronomically high.

No rational person is going to take a $12 bottle of wine into a restaurant and then willingly pay a $20 or $30 corkage fee, but it would make a good deal of sense to take a $40 or $50 bottle of wine at the same fee levels. A $12 bottle of wine will often be selling in the restaurant for $30-$36, while a $40 bottle will be marked up well over $100.

Of course, the nanny-state advocates will be all over this one as encouraging unlimited drinking (as if underage drinkers are going to suddenly start walking into restaurants because they can bring in a bottle). To some people, any easing of the now-ancient restrictions on alcohol is by definition a bad thing. They're the sort of people who don't really trust anyone to act responsibly unless there's a policeman watching them.

Here's a toast to common sense: a rare and uncommon bird in these parts.