Buried at the end of Gov. Kathy Hochul's book outlining her 2023 agenda was a pledge to overhaul New York's alcohol and beverage control laws -- regulations she called "byzantine" and out of date. 

How those laws change could have a wide-ranging effect on both businesses from restaurants to distributors as well as consumers themselves. And it's also a potentially politically tricky proposition. 

A source on Friday said Hochul last year began conversations with members of the wine industry about potentially allowing their product to be sold in grocery stores, a long-sought goal of supermarket owners in New York, but one vehemently opposed by the owners of liquor stores. 

The exploratory phase died down as the year concluded, and at the moment it's unlikely a plan to allow wine in grocery stores will be proposed in the state budget when the governor unveils it next Wednesday.

A fight over selling wine in grocery stores was previously waged unsuccessfully more than a decade ago in Albany backed by powerful interests like the owners of the popular Wegmans supermarket chain. 

The Business Council of New York State last year began a push to make changes to the existing regulations for alcohol sales, including so-called "public convenience” requirements that limits where liquor stores can be opened. The regulation is considered a vestige of the immediate post-prohibition era. 

And Hochul has taken a dim view of the current alcohol laws on the books.

Her briefing book called for a "a policy-neutral rewrite of the existing law in order to improve both improve legibility and understanding of the existing law, and to foster a clearer conversation in the future about any proposed reforms."

The governor, too, has been open to changing the existing measures on the books. A popular pandemic-era order that allowed patrons to take alcoholic beverages to go was made law after Hochul threw her support behind it last year. 

The change was coupled with a commission to review aspects of the alcohol and beverage control laws and make potential changes. Any measures meant to reform the system could run into headwinds from a variety of points of contact in the industry, from producers, to wholesales, distributors and the customer-facing businesses themselves.