All Bottled Up How to ensure your homebased wine-selling business doesn't turn into sour grapes
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Question: I'm interested in opening a wine-sellingbusiness from home but am clueless about how to begin. How do Ilearn about licenses, or even how to purchase wine fromwineries?
Answer: Wine continues to grow in popularity. In fact,wine consumption has grown dramatically in the U.S., up 63 percentsince 1991. As you're aware, people's choices aren'tconfined to the wine on their local store shelves; they can buywine online and have it delivered to their doorsteps (though youcan't ship wine via the U.S. Postal Service; it'sillegal).
While it's easier to sell and store wine than whiskey andother distilled spirits, you must be prepared to affiliate withnonhomebased licensed establishments and navigate complicated statealcoholic-beverage control laws and regulations, which changefrequently.
Your customer base is limited to states that allow directshipment of wine to consumers. For information on laws andregulations in all states, The Wine Institute provides links atwww.wineinstitute.org/shipwine.
Wherever you live, as an internet-based retail business, youshould get a license from the California Department of AlcoholicBeverage Control. Why? Because California is not only thenation's largest producer of wine, but it's also home tothe most consumers. Licenses aren't expensive--just $100 thefirst year--but the department requires out-of-state sellers to"operate in conjunction with a brick-and-mortar retailstore."
Once you've figured out how to comply with stateregulations, you face the challenge of finding customers. eBay hasa "closed" category for wine sales, which means it'snot findable from eBay's category list, but it can be foundthrough a keyword search. To sell in this category, you must getprior approval from eBay. For more information on selling wine oneBay, go to http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/alcohol.html.
One niche to explore is selling high-priced wines acquired bycollectors, connoisseurs and investors. To do this, check out localwine brokers and auction houses that handle wine at www.winebroker.com.
