A rule of thumb I’ve learned in a dozen-plus years reporting on the beer business is that most readers simply do not give a shit about the three-tier system, to the extent that they even know it exists. Of the bunch, they care about the middle tier — beer distributors — least of all. However! Hop Take readers are smarter than most, and earlier this month in the country’s second-biggest beer market, the country’s largest wholesaler lost a lawsuit that showcased a major source of the middle tier’s power, and its limits. You better believe we’re going to talk about it.
The case, Harbor Distributing LLC (d/b/a Golden Brands) vs. Mainsheet Capital, Inc. (d/b/a Anderson Valley Brewing Co., had been winding its way through California’s court system for the past half-decade until earlier this month, when the Superior Court of California in Sacramento County issued its ruling in the matter. Finding for Anderson Valley Brewing Co. (AVBC) in a June 7 ruling, Judge Andre K. Campbell wrote that “Harbor’s proffered interpretation of ‘beer manufacturer’ would lead to an absurd result” when applied to the relevant state law.
The upshot, in lay terms? Hizzoner ruled that Golden Brands — a subsidiary of Reyes Beverage Group (RBG), the largest beer distributor in the country and its sixth-largest privately held company — couldn’t recover the hefty fair-market-value compensation it had demanded for AVBC’s exclusive brand rights in the Golden State territories in question, because it was never really entitled to it in the
