Virginia's answer to the court ruling that ended the ability of small-farm wineries to distribute their goods gets its formal launch in Albemarle County today.

The state will pop the cork on the Virginia Winery Distribution Co. at the King Family Vineyards in Crozet.

The nonprofit company, created by the legislature in 2007, will provide distribution services to small-farm wineries for up to 3,000 cases per year. Lawmakers created the company to overcome constitutional questions about self-distribution privileges that an earlier legislature had granted to Virginia wineries but not to those from out of state.

Self-distribution to wine shops and restaurants without going through an independent wholesaler was provided for in a law the General Assembly passed in 1980. However, in 2000, some out-of-state wineries and Virginia consumers filed a federal lawsuit challenging the law as interfering with interstate commerce.

The case made its way to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which held in 2005 that the state law created a burden on trade because it did not extend self-distribution to out-of-state wineries. Virginia wine wholesalers, which have enjoyed a monopoly on distribution in the state since the end of Prohibition in the 1930s, objected to an attempt in 2006 to fix the constitutional problem by giving out-of-state wineries distribution rights.

However, the court created an opening for self-distribution when it ruled against a challenge to a Virginia law stating that Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control stores can sell only wine that is produced in Virginia. The state could discriminate against out-of-state wineries when it was acting as a participant in the wine market, just as any other retailer could choose which wines it wanted to sell, the court said.

Last year, the legislature based the creation of the state-run wine-distribution company on the same legal theory. Small wineries, which are too small to efficiently use a third-party distributor, will be able to continue delivering their products to retailers while having the sales paperwork and payments handled by the state-run distribution company, at fees much less than those of a private distributor.

Terri Cofer Beirne, a lawyer and lobbyist for the Virginia Wineries Association, said 70 of Virginia's 130 farm wineries have shown an interest in using the state distribution company, a unit of the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Beirne warned that the state company, the first in the country, may face legal challenges. Contact Greg Edwards at (804) 649-6390 or gedwards@timesdispatch.com.