direct shipping

Posted: January 29, 2013 By Robert Taylor

When Maryland state comptroller Peter Franchot presented a "Study on the Impact of Direct Wine Shipment" to the state's General Assembly this past December, it confirmed everything direct-shipping proponents have been saying since the 1980s: Direct shipping offers consumers greater choice, brings more tax revenue in for the state, and poses no credible risk of increased underage drinking.

News & Features : Unfiltered

Best of Unfiltered 2012

Destruction trumped beauty in 2012, just barely, with demolished wineries drawing attention from models, actresses and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie

Posted: December 27, 2012

Dec. 15, 2012 Issue : News

Amazon to Try Wine, Again

Posted: December 15, 2012 By Tim Fish, Augustus Weed

News & Features : News

Giving the Gift of Wine via Facebook

Facebook Gifts enables members of legal age to buy and ship wine to one another

Posted: December 14, 2012 By Robert Taylor

News & Features : News

Amazon Launches Wine Sales Site

Web retail giant partners with U.S. wineries; rival Wine.com launches a competing site

Posted: November 8, 2012 By Tim Fish

Oct. 31, 2012 Issue : Features

Canada Inches Toward Direct Shipping

Posted: October 31, 2012 By Robert Taylor

Blogs : Mixed Case: Opinion and Advice

Will Amazon Change The Way We Buy Wine?

The web retail giant's plans for wine are modest—for now

Posted: October 11, 2012 By Mitch Frank

When I heard the news that Amazon executives were meeting with wineries, hoping to launch Amazon.com Wine Marketplace before year's end, I was reminded of the play Waiting For Godot. In Samuel Beckett's work, two characters spend two acts waiting in vain for Godot, whom we never meet. There's a sense that everything will change once Godot shows up. For a dozen years now, the wine industry has been waiting for Bezos—Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, who has made unsuccessful stabs at selling wine twice before.

Amazon loves efficiency, and the wine business, where each state is like a separate country with different laws, is not efficient. But either Bezos is a wine lover or he sees great potential in it, because Amazon is back. If it succeeds in launching Wine Marketplace, the question is: Will this truly be a game changer for the wine business or just an absurdist drama?

News & Features : News

Amazon to Try Wine, Again

Web retail giant meeting with wineries, planning new “wine marketplace”

Posted: September 28, 2012 By Tim Fish

Blogs : Mixed Case: Opinion and Advice

Where'd You Get That Wine?

Direct shipping sales have grown to $1.35 billion in just seven years, but they could grow a lot more

Posted: September 27, 2012 By Mitch Frank

Fall tends to be my favorite time of year, a sentiment many wine lovers apparently share. After a long, hot summer, temperatures are finally dipping—and lower temperatures bring happy boxes to my door. When the weather cools off, wineries I order from can ship bottles to my New Orleans home without fretting that summer heat will turn their Merlot into Madeira. A new study finds that October is the busiest month for direct shipping orders from U.S. wineries.

More than seven years have passed since the Supreme Court's Granholm decision, which said that state governments cannot prohibit out-of-state wineries from shipping to residents while allowing in-state wineries to do so. Today, 39 states allow some form of direct shipping, up from 27 before the 2005 ruling.

The new report, authored by Ship Compliant, measured the direct shipping market from August 2011 to July 2012, surveying every U.S. winery in Wines & Vines' comprehensive directory about their direct shipping sales. They found that consumers ordered 2.98 million cases of wine in that time. With a value of $1.35 billion, that wine represents 8.6 percent of the total wine market in the United States by value. (Tasting room sales that were shipped to customers' homes were not included, which would make the growth even bigger.)

News & Features : News