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Direct-To-Consumer Wine Sales Has Arrived... Big Time!

» posted by Rich on 2010-01-19 06:48:51

Direct To Consumer (DTC) wine sales was the rising trend in the wine industry last year, allowing wineries, big and small, to sell their wine right to their customers... skipping the middlemen, (i.e.. grocery stores, wine shops, or restaurants). This helped bring much needed capitol to the winery in a year with smaller tasting room crowds.

I saw this article this morning on WineSpectator.com about how Massachusetts state law will now allow direct shipping from wineries, lifting a law that limited direct shipping to "small wineries" (those wineries "making less than 30,000 gallons of grape wine a year").

Then there is the new flock of winery reservation sites (see our feature about CellarPass and VinoVisit) that include an e-commerce aspect for DTC sales. (These sites are in their infancy and are developing new features daily, like VinoVisit's new "Book A Visit" Facebook app for winery Facebook pages). It's unknown whether these reservation sites will catch on, but in the meantime, the wineries are really starting to pick up their social media side, gaining direct access to their customers (or "fans"), and their dollars.

The online laws for selling wine are changing in states across the country, opening up huge possibilities for wineries. It was strange to see Amazon drop their plans late last year to get into the wine biz, mostly because of the legal minefield they'd have to navigate, but it may turn out to be a good thing for wineries everywhere.