For decades the prohibition of ordering wines directly from out-of-state wineries was a thorn in the side of vintners both large and (especially) small. In recent years, though, state after state has ended or relaxed that prohibition, and wine lovers finally have an avenue to purchase those hard-to-find wines without getting on a plane and flying to their source.
And they’ve wasted little time taking advantage of that avenue. In fact, last year mail order direct from winery shipments increased four times as much as off-premise wine sales, 8.5 percent to 2 percent, according to the annual Direct-to-Consumer Wine Shipping report from ShipCompliant and Wines & Vines. That amounts to some 4.2 million cases valued at almost $2 billion.
Wines from Napa Valley wineries accounted for more than half of that dollar amount, the report states, with Oregon wineries recording gains of almost 15 percent over the previous year.
Other report highlights: Cabernet Sauvignon accounted for 30 percent of all direct-from-winery shipped wines, with residents of the District of Columbia, California, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming ordering the most wine per capita. Whatever they were ordering, it wasn’t cheap, with the average price of direct-shipped wine closing in on the $40 mark.
There’s likely still some room for those numbers to grow, as seven states (Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Utah, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama) still forbid direct wine shipping, with another five (New Jersey, Ohio, Kentucky, Louisiana and Arizona) allowing it within limits.