For sale soon at Legislature: Nevada wine, straight from California

Monday, May 21, 2007 | 7:37 a.m.

CARSON CITY - Lawmakers may whine about not enough money to pay for highways, prisons and education, but they have stumbled across a new revenue stream for the state's official gift shop: Selling wine - and maybe California wine at that - labeled with the Nevada state seal.

Talk about a Silver State souvenir! "My children visited Carson City and all they brought me was this bottle of wine with the state logo."

A bill to approve the sale of custom-labeled wine in the Legislative Building gift shop will go before the Assembly for passage, perhaps as soon as today. It already got enough thumbs-ups in the Senate (oh those partyers).

And they say it's hard to pass bills up here...

Selling state wine makes about as much sense as anything else. The gift shop already sells wine glasses and beer glasses with the state seal. The shop also sells pendants, flags, belt buckles, jackets, plush bighorn sheep, socks - you name it - typically with the seal of the great state imprinted somewhere on it.

If this bill passes, the state will seek proposals from vintners. So yes, the wine may have California roots (isn't that already true for much of Nevada?) but there are winemakers in Douglas County and Pahrump that may want the business, too.

It'll be decent wine, the politicians promise. Corks, not screw caps, they say.

But nobody is getting carried away.

Don't expect, for instance, labels like Buckley Beaujolais, Cegavske Chardonnay or Manendo Merlot.

But "a nicely labeled good wine," says Sen. Mike Schneider, D-Las Vegas, who fermented the idea of selling souvenir bottles in the Legislature gift shop.

"It's going to be a big money maker for gifts," Sen. Mike Schneider, D-Las Vegas, predicts. "But we're not going into the liquor store business."

Who's to say whether the biggest customers will be lawmakers or lobbyists? Wine already is served in the building for special events.

Liquor is banned in the capitol building, where the governor sits, so don't expect any crazy TGIFs over there.

Nor at the Governor's Mansion. The first lady has banned alcohol at functions there.

But that isn't expected to put a wet blanket on the wine sales idea. Assembly Majority Leader John Oceguera anticipates no problems with Assembly approval and dispatching the bill to the governor for his signature.

Brent Boynton, communications director for Gov. Jim Gibbons, said Gibbons would not veto the bill because of the no-liquor policy in the mansion. He said his boss has not seen the bill but predicted he would not have "any problem" with approving it.