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| Wine lovers buy, lobby on the Web |
| By Lisa Baertlein |
PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Web wine sellers, who have seen potential revenues crushed by restrictive state shipping laws, continue to recruit supporters in a push for the right to send wine to adults anywhere in the United States.
Wine.com (http://www.wine.com), a popular online wine seller that offers access to wine reviews from consumers as well as from The Wine Spectator Magazine, has many fans on the Web. Among them is Miami attorney Beth Moya, who is helping the company thrive after its near extinction.
"I love buying wine online," Moya said. "You can make informed decisions. They've got a good selection, very good prices and everything arrives in a little box."
Wine.com was born in Silicon Valley and Napa Valley in 2000. Then, instead of living up to hype that it was destined to be a billion-dollar company, the dot-com burned through $200 million in venture funding and collapsed.
The "new" Wine.com came into existence when eVineyard bought Wine.com's assets, URL and its customer list in bankruptcy. The latest incarnation calls itself the nation's biggest online wine retailer, with customers in 30 states.
In Florida, Wine.com has undertaken an expensive licensing arrangement that allows it to ship only wines that are available at retailers throughout the Sunshine State. It is a felony offense to bypass that system.
The recent boycott of French products following France's opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq led to an increase in French wine sales on WineGlobe.com.
Sales were up 7 percent to 10 percent, while the company's bricks-and-mortar store in San Mateo, California, saw sales of French wine drop about 40 percent, said Manu Rekhi, the company's director of marketing.
"It was like porn. You didn't want to be seen buying it," Rekhi joked. He said a likely explanation was that Web shoppers' average sale -- at $176 -- is higher than walk-in customers and they may have been stocking up, just in case French imports were limited.
Elsewhere, swanky auction houses cater to collectors and big spenders. Among them is New York City-based Morrell & Co. (http://www.morrellwine.com), which on May 17 will hold its second "Internet Only" sale of fine and rare wines -- including sought-after Bordeaux lots such as Mouton-Rothschild 1959 and 1982, and "California cult wines" from Colgin Cellars, Harlan Estate and Bryant Family Vineyard.
CellarExchange.com (http://www.cellarexchange.com), a free wine auction and trading destination, is a peer-to-peer site for people who spend more than $150 a month.
Winoworld.com (http://www.winoworld.com) specializes in vintages from the Pacific Northwest and California, and links to new and archived reviews from partner site, DamnGoodWine.com.
More and more wineries are moving toward Internet sales and lobbying for greater freedom to ship wines to customers, regardless of their home address. Industry watchers say knocking out legally sanctioned middlemen or licensing requirements would make Web wine sales more appealing and profitable.
But for now, selling wine directly to out-of-state, adult customers is a legal briar patch.
"Until there's some success at the Supreme Court level allowing direct shipments to every state in the union, the real potential of online sales will be frustrated," said Eileen Fredrikson, a partner at wine industry consulting and economics firm Gomberg, Fredrikson & Associates.
In California, home to world-famous Napa Valley, individuals can order up to two cases of wine per month by direct shipment from wineries in states such as Hawaii, Washington, Oregon and Illinois, which are among a group of 13 with reciprocity agreements.
New York, Texas, Virginia and North Carolina do not have such agreements and ban direct shipment of wine, which federal judges have found to be unconstitutional.
Tracy Genesen, legal director for the Coalition for Free Trade, said New York and Texas have appealed. Virginia residents on July 1 will be allowed to receive limited amounts of wine from out-of-state wineries that have permits to do so. In North Carolina, where the court also shut down in-state winery shipments, plaintiffs have asked for a new hearing.
Free the Grapes (http://www.freethegrapes.org), a grass-roots collection of consumers and wineries, invites Web surfers to join the fight against restrictions in the 27 states that still prohibit direct sales to residents.
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