State Store

Harold L. Gochenaur, 61, sits on his front porch along South 2nd Street, chewing tobacco, petting his dog and looking at VFW Post 6771 about 100 yards down the block. Gochenaur has lived here 30 years. You can see the town water tower from his place. He's about to retire after 39 years as a cement-truck driver. And, like many in this tiny York County borough 16 miles southwest of Harrisburg, he is puzzled. He's not sure why the state recently shut down the VFW for selling beer and liquor without a license.

"W ow" is not my usual first word to describe a Pennsylvania wine store, but the PLCB's new mega-space in Northern Liberties (180 W. Girard Ave.) is vast and shiny enough to prompt it. Of course, Ugh is my next word when the hunt begins for someone (anyone!) to help knowledgeably navigate the 3,300-plus selections. No such luck on a midweek day. So here I am, offering up two hot tips for great bottles to be found in the massive collection of Store #5125. First, there are a few bottles left of Domaine Durand's 2008 Cornas Empreintes.

Lillian Powell began organizing weeks ago to lead a demonstration aimed at ridding her Germantown neighborhood of drugs and alcohol and the people who abuse them. As a first step, she wants to close down the state liquor store at Chew Avenue near Chelten. But not all of her neighbors understand her mission. "A man called the other day and said, 'Why attack the State Store? Why not fight the drugs?' " said Powell, president of the Chew and Chelten Townwatch. "And I said, 'Well, alcohol is one of the worst drugs.

STATE STORE PICK OF THE MONTH Don Miguel Gascón Malbec Mendoza, Argentina $10.99* PLCB Item No. 4827 Red malbec wines from Argentina have taken the American market by storm in recent years, thanks to their exceptional price to quality ratio. At first, they were found mainly in the under $10 category, but now that they've proven their worth and recruited a generation of wine drinkers, more and more premium wines are being imported. Higher-end malbecs, like this one that normally retails for $15 a bottle, deliver an exceptional concentration of dark berry flavor with the grape's signature undercurrents of earthy floral aromatics.

Gov. Thornburgh today signed an executive order aiming to turn over to private ownership the 705 state-owned outlets that are the only legal places to buy bottled liquor in Pennsylvania. Standing in front of a state store in a shopping center on City Avenue at noon, Thornburgh held up a "symbolic" sign proclaiming "For Sale/ State Liquor Monopoly. " "The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has no business operating a $750 million-a-year monopoly," Thornburgh said. "The history of the LCB has been marked by corruption, mismanagement, a recent pattern of declining profits and decades of legitimate customer complaints about service, selection and convenience.

Attention armed robbers: Starting today, it will no longer be profitable to hold up state liquor stores. So said Mayor Rendell, District Attorney Lynne Abraham and John E. Jones 3d, chairman of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, at a news conference yesterday. Their cause for concern was a rash of State Store robberies in Philadelphia in the first six months of this year. Of 17 such robberies in Pennsylvania, 16 were in the city. In all of 1994, there were 21 State Store robberies, Jones said.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Liquor Control Board won praise from State Rep. Gerard A. Kosinski (D., Phila.) for its response to a request by Frankford and Northwood community leaders to limit sales of certain brands of wine at a store in their area. "During the autumn, I was contacted by the Northwood Civic Association and the Frankford United Neighbors Community Development Corp.," Kosinski said in an interview Friday. "They wanted to have fortified wines removed from the shelves of the state store at 4721 Oxford Ave. because of problems caused by the sale of that type of wine.

State officials have agreed to restrict the hours of a liquor store on a block of Lincoln Highway in Coatesville that is troubled by loiterers and public drinking. Coatesville City Manager Wayne "Ted" Reed said the City Council had asked the state Liquor Control Board to close the state store in the 700 block of East Lincoln Highway at 6 p.m. each night instead of as late as 9 p.m., as it had four out of the six nights it was open. Reed said that on summer evenings, up to 200 people would congregate in a two-block area near the store, sometimes drinking alcohol publicly or selling drugs.

HARRISBURG - A legislative panel on Monday endorsed a revamped version of Gov. Corbett's liquor-privatization bill that would give existing beer distributors first crack at liquor and wine licenses and expand beer and wine sales to grocery stores. In a 14-10 party-line vote, the House Liquor Committee backed a bill that would potentially phase out the existing state-controlled stores as the number of private operators grows. Both the GOP governor and Rep. John Taylor, the Philadelphia Republican who chairs the committee, called the amendment a "first step" that would lead to scrutiny of the complicated legislation not only on the House floor but in the Senate.

  HARRISBURG - This week will be the first test of whether the legislature can finally reach consensus on a plan to privatize the sale of wine and hard liquor in Pennsylvania. The House Liquor Control Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing Monday to consider Gov. Corbett's privatization plan, which calls for auctioning off the state's 600-plus wine and spirits shops to the private sector. Proceeds from the sale - estimated at about $1 billion - would be given to public schools through an initiative to help them pay for early-childhood education and school security, among other things.

Gov. Corbett again made his case Wednesday for the privatization of liquor sales, saying "antiquated" laws hold Pennsylvania in a Prohibition-era mind-set. "Here in Pennsylvania we make it as hard as possible to buy a bottle of wine on a Sunday," said Corbett, speaking to the Delaware County Chamber of Commerce in Springfield and flanked by business leaders and educators. "We should listen to what the people want. " Corbett's pitch, to make 1,200 liquor licenses available to grocery stores, drugstores, and wholesalers, would lead to $1 billion in revenue, he said.

The Pennsylvania House and Senate Appropriations Committees met this week to address modernizing everyone's favorite monopoly, the state Liquor Control Board. Right there, you've got your first problem. Pennsylvania, the land time forgot, doesn't do change. The board was founded at the end of Prohibition to, as Gov. Gifford Pinchot declared, "discourage the purchase of alcoholic beverages by making it as inconvenient and expensive as possible," a promise we can agree it has made good on to this day. We have the "temporary" 18 percent Johnstown Flood Tax that dates to 1936.

STATE STORE PICK OF THE WEEK Cline Viognier North Coast California $11.99 PLCB Item No. 3006 If you like Chardonnay, chances are you'll LOVE viognier. It shares Chardonnay's framing qualities, in that it is usually dry and voluptuously full-bodied, full of juicy fruit flavor and not sharply acidic. Where it differs is in its aromatic profile. Chardonnay is relatively sedate in its buttered popcorn and apple pie flavors; viognier features an exuberant riot of tastes and smells - lychees and peaches, violets and muskmelons.

HARRISBURG - Call it liquor privatization with a twist. Like others before him, Gov. Corbett wants to auction off Pennsylvania's wine and liquor stores - but he wants to use the projected $1 billion in proceeds to help public schools. Tying privatization to education aid was the surprise element in Corbett's long-awaited announcement Wednesday of his proposal to get the state out of the business of selling wine and liquor. The governor, flanked by fellow Republicans from the state House, said his vision for privatizing was big and aggressive, and came down to two words: consumer convenience.