Wine is one of those items listed as “sin taxes.”  Governments have been taxing ideas, property and things for centuries.  This country formed over an unfair tax, but we have been taxing ever since.   There have been taxes imposed on wig powder, wall paper, photographs, cigars, snuff and all types of tobacco, narcotics, fertilizer, bees, liquor, beer and wine and almost any else they can.   Not to mention real estate and sales tax.  This is a chance for me to talk a little bit about another hobby of mine.  I collect esoteric tax stamps, because I find some of the subjects intriguing.

Most states had at one time, state run stores that one had to purchase their alcoholic beverages.  There was tax stamps applied to the bottles like a decal, there were strips that covered the caps, which required them to be torn during the opening of the bottle.  There were tax stamps applied to cartons and cases and even barrels.

I am showing a bottle of 1928 Calvet Chablis from Beaune with a six cent banderole (the stamp requiring the ripping of it to open the bottle).  The other bottle is a Mirafiore Chianti Classico in a straw fiasco wrapper with a three and one quarter cent tax banderole (the straw wrapped bottles are normally found to hold less than the 750 ml of a standard bottle, the Chianti is actually only a pint bottle).  These were given to me as curios for my cellar, as I have to intention of ever trying even a sip of either wine.

Nowadays, most states have eliminated the actual stamp, as a cost cutting method, but the taxes are still collected; only now they are hidden in the price of the bottle, plus a sales tax as well.  It is the way of the world.