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It has been 20 years since Ron Mark planted his first grape vines and a little more than a decade since he opened Summerset Winery near Indianola, a move that helped pioneer the resurrection of an Iowa wine industry that had been dormant for decades.

One lawsuit could prove toxic to the winery, not to mention the industry, Mark says.

A Missouri winery filed a federal lawsuit earlier this month claiming that Iowa’s wine distribution laws are unfair to out-of-state wineries and therefore unconstitutional.

“It’s going to be bad,” Mark said, shortly after he got off the phone last Thursday with the Iowa wine industry’s lobbyist and Lynn Walding, the man who oversees enforcement of the state’s liquor laws. “We’ve got them coming after everything we do to support the Iowa wine industry.”Mark and Matt Eide, lobbyist for the Iowa Wine Growers Association, said it appears that the state is reluctant to challenge the lawsuit, given that similar challenges to laws in other states have proven successful for the plaintiffs, and, Mark would argue, detrimental to native wine operations.

Most of those lawsuits have been filed since 2005, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Michigan law that gave preference to its burgeoning wine industry restricted interstate commerce and was unconstitutional.

Robert Epstein, the Indiana lawyer who carried the Michigan case to the high court, is part of the legal team representing Oakglenn Vineyards & Winery Inc., which operates in the heart of Missouri wine country and traces its origins to a 19th century horticulturist who helped save the French wine industry when its vineyards were devastated by disease.

Epstein said the last thing he wants to do is be a part of the ruination of the Iowa native wine industry.

However, his client and other Missouri wineries are at a competitive disadvantage because they are denied the ability to ship directly to Iowa consumers. The only way to beat the restriction is to ship through a distributor, and that cuts into profits.

Mark is afraid that Iowa wineries will watch their profits collapse if they are forced to sell their wines through a distributor or pay the $1.75 a gallon state liquor tax. They currently are exempt from the tax for wine sold onsite directly to customers at a winery.

“This is devastating, but Lynn has told us this is coming for years” because of the high court ruling, Mark said.

Eide said two issues are at play. One is the state’s desire to charge out-of-state wineries a permitting fee to ship into the state and also require them to pay the $1.75 tax on alcoholic beverages. The other issue is attempting to free Iowa’s native wineries from that same exposure, especially if the fee were to roll directly into the state treasury without having some direct benefit to the wineries.

“We’re dealing with the heart and soul of what has incentivized this industry – low distribution costs, exemption from the gallonage tax, licensing fees. We need to find ways based on what other states have done to legally incentivize our native wineries and have them prosper,” Eide said.

Mark also noted that a change in state law could deny small businesses, such as gift shops, from selling Iowa wines if they obtain a $25 annual permit.