Buying Wine Online
The majority of states these days are allowing wineries to ship directly to consumers. This means greater choice, better prices, and (arguably) more convenience. However, the world of online wine buying is still in its infancy with the FTC estimating that 5-10% of wine sales could be online within a few years. Until more states pass laws allowing online sales and the entire industry matures, you’ll just have to trust reviews or pray it works out.
Post-Gazette provides one of five different online stores: Raeder’s Wines & Liquors, The Wine Specialist, Wine.com, Sam’s Wines & Spirits, and Finewinehouse.com. Overall, they found the experience relatively painless, though you should probably read the details.
For a comprehensive list of states that allow wine shipments, check out the bottom of Woot Wine.
May 30th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
It’s ironic that the Post-Gazette did an article on this topic considering that direct-shipping from wine merchants is unavailable in Pennsylvania (unless you go through a convoluted process via the state liquor stores, which makes the entire enterprise prohibitively expensive and inconvenient).
Perhaps someday our Orwellian PA Liquor Control Board will collapse under the weight of it’s own irrelevance and we’ll be able to enjoy reasonable access to alcohol like the rest of the country (except Utah of course. Those folks make PA look like The French Quarter.)
*jumps off soapbox*
June 6th, 2006 at 11:31 am
first off: i love your blog! i’m un-lurking to ask why for some reason this post constantly shows up as “unread” on bloglines.. is anyone else having that problem?
June 6th, 2006 at 11:35 am
I have no idea. I’ll look into it.
August 23rd, 2006 at 10:09 pm
The first shop on this list - Raeder’s Wines & Liquors left me with a very bad taste - while the shipping laws may allow shipping to most states, and their website definitely accepts orders for shipping, when it comes to actually sending the stuff, this store is more then a bit lacking:
I placed an order on their website. For a week they were calling me to make changes to what I requested (”we don’t have this bottle”, “this one is too big to ship”, etc.), and finally a rep called and said “we can’t ship to nevada, so we cancel your order”. why? “my manager said so”.
Hmm. Maybe the Post-Gazette have a higher pain tolerance then me.