Shipping wine from New York retailers to out of state customers

Lately, while working on updating the shipping page of our website, I realized that there is no valuable information whatsoever regarding the laws about shipping wine from New York Wine & Spirits retailers to customers in other states.

There are plenty of info about wineries, what they can do and where they can ship (especially from California) but nothing really about New York wine retailers.

The only, somewhat, informative writing that I could find was from a "Wine Spectator.com" articles dated from 2005 (you can always read it at http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/Shipping-Laws-State-by-State_1049).

The article is a bit outdated and quite a few things have change since then, yet it will give you somewhat of an idea about the permitted, limited and prohibited states.

After searching "Google" in many ways with many different combination of words and even by consulting the website of "The New York State Liquor Authority" website at http://www.abc.state.ny.us/; I couldn't find the answer to my question:

What are the prohibited states for New York retailers to ship wine to for out of state customers?

By law, New York retailers can NOT ship Spirits out of state and FedEx and UPS can only deliver wine to certain states.

You see, in the United States of America, the different states are far from being united in many ways. Each state has is own laws and regulations, and barely none of them interact with each-other. Being still a gray area, it is therefore difficult to really know what are the states that are NOT "dry" (as we say in the trade). Even in New York, they are still trying to enforce laws that seem to date from post-prohibition time in the 30s. I think it is about time to realize that we are in the 21th century and things need to change for the better.

In my opinion, instead of state regulated laws, we should have federal laws that will resume once and for all this weird situation. As always, it might not please and will surely not be in the interest of some people and probably upset a lot of them, but I think in some ways it will be better. But this too long of a discussion to be handle in one post....

After searching the internet and the many New York wine retailers websites, I draw a list of what I think are the states that are open to receive wine shipments from New York wine retailers for customers out of state. This list may not be the most accurate, and I'm eager to receive any comments to make it more accurate for all the wine buyers and wine retailers like me that have been asking themselves the same questions.

Please find below a list of states which are legal to ship to for New York retailers. If you reside or wish to receive a shipment in a state that is not allowed to receive alcoholic beverages, should contact a member of the sales team at your favorite Wine shop (in our case www.HeightsChateau.com) to make alternative arrangements.

Here is a list of the open or non "Dry" States, New York wine retailers you can ship to:

• Arizona (AZ),
  
• California (CA),
  
• Colorado (CO),
  
• Connecticut (CT),
  
• District of Columbia (DC),
  
• Hawaii (HI),
  
• Idaho (ID),
• Illinois (IL) (?),
  
• Iowa (IA),
  
• Minnesota (MN),
  
• Missouri (MO),
  
• Nebraska (NE),
  
• Nevada (NV),
  
• New Mexico (NM),
  
• New Jersey (NJ) (?),
  
• New York (NY),
  
• North Dakota (ND),
  
• Ohio (OH),
  
• Oregon (OR),
  
• South Carolina (SC),
  
• South Dakota (SD),
  
• Texas (TX),
  
• Vermont (VT),
  
• Washington (WA),
  
• West Virginia (WV),
• Wisconsin (WI),
  
• Wyoming (WY).

New York wine retailers can NOT ship to the following states for legal reasons and individual internal state laws:

• Alabama (AL),
  
• Alaska (AK),
  
• Arkansas (AR),
  
• Delaware (DE),
  
• Florida (FL),
  
• Georgia (GA),
  
• Illinois (IL) (?),
  
• Indiana (IN),
  
• Kansas (KS),
  
• Kentucky (KY),
  
• Maine (ME),
  
• Montana (MT),
  
• New Hampshire (NH),
  
• Louisiana (LA),
  
• Massachusetts (MA),
  
• Maryland (MD),
  
• Michigan (MI),
  
• Mississippi (MS),
  
• North Carolina (NC),
  
• Oklahoma (OK),
  
• Pennsylvania (PA),
  
• Rhode Island (RI),
  
• Tennessee (TN),
  
• Utah (UT)
  
• and Virginia (VA).

I hope that you will find these two lists useful. If I made some mistakes, do not hesitate to send me comments to make it more accurate. Thank you.

Enjoy!

LeDom du Vin

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