The latest in Ontario booze news is that beer sales are still a go in supermarkets but that wine will have to wait. The Star reports that the April 23rd provincial budget set to be tabled by the Liberals will outline a shift in beer sales involving some 300 odd supermarkets, as was initially leaked about a month ago.

Wine, however, has proven to be a more complicated matter. With beer, the government is able to auction off new licences to the highest bidding supermarkets, but the plan with wine has been to repurpose licences currently held by the Wine Rack and the Wine Shop, which total 268 across the province.

Apparently there are concerns that the expansion of these licences to accommodate supermarket sales could run into problems with international trade agreements (the Wine Rack, for instance, is a U.S. company). As the Star's anonymous Liberal source says, "wine needs some time."

In other words, it doesn't sound like the this hiccup has lead the government to stray from its plan of expanding wine sales across the province. It merely has to come up with a way to make this happen that won't lead to problems down the road.