One of the delights of the wine industry is its vast and widespread variety. Not only are there so many different styles and varietals to try, but also an ever-expanding list of unique wine regions to buy from. 

Indeed, even a country with as extensive and robust domestic wine production as the United States still is a major importer of wines from across the world, purchasing up to 17% of all global wine imports in 2021 according to the Department of Agriculture.

By and large, there is little difference in how imported wines are sold compared to wines produced domestically. A U.S. based importer will need to act as the supplier of record in lieu of the manufacturer and some states may require additional documentation when registering brand labels, but when selling through the three-tier system, as most wine is sold in the U.S., the broad rules around relying on distributors to sell to retailers apply equally. 

For the still developing direct-to-consumer (DtC) shipping market, imported wines are severely limited. In fact, in many states, imported wines are effectively excluded from DtC shipping allowances, leaving consumers there completely without access unless there is a local distributor willing to carry them. 

Foreign wine producers looking to get into DtC shipping in the U.S. therefore need to be aware of these limitations to not fall afoul of any state’s laws.

The challenges of DtC shipping imported wines

One of the key considerations when doing DtC shipping is ensuring that you are permitted to DtC ship to the states you want to ship to. This means first recognizing if the state allows DtC shipping to begin with (sorry, no Utah!) and second, having the licenses required by the state.

This presents perhaps the clearest challenge to DtC shipping of imported wines, as most state DtC shipping licenses are reserved for U.S. based wine manufacturers. No state that allows DtC shipping will issue a license to an out-of-country entity, so a winery based in France or Chile will not be able to be a shipper itself. And vanishingly few states will issue DtC licenses even to domestic import-only businesses (only Kentucky, New Hampshire, West Virginia and Wyoming appear to allow this).

The reason that no state will issue a DtC shipping license to a foreign winery is twofold. 

For one, DtC shipping is largely seen as an exception to how things normally work, in that it allows participants to sell to consumers without first going through a distributor. In that, DtC shipping is abided as a well-intentioned benefit for select parties, namely the many small, craft and family-owned wineries that struggle to gain the attention of distributors (and who, indeed, make up the bulk of DtC shippers). But foreign wineries, for perhaps less friendly reasons, were never seen as deserving of that honor.

But there is also a very practical, if legalistic, reason that no state will issue a license to a foreign winery: it would be effectively impossible to prosecute them if something were to go wrong with their DtC shipments. This is because a state alcohol agency has no jurisdiction in other countries and so would have no authority to enforce its laws against a foreign winery it thought was shipping improperly. Even with domestic DtC shippers, this jurisdictional issue makes it exceedingly difficult for a state to enforce its laws against a winery even in the next state over. 

The mechanisms that are available for states to pursue legal action against wineries in other states—the 21stAmendment Enforcement Act, which grants states “long arm” jurisdiction when it comes to violations of their alcohol law, and the acceptance of remote jurisdictional authority that every DtC shipper has to agree to when they get a license in a state—would not be available with foreign wineries. (And even if they theoretically were, there’d be a minefield of international law to cross first.)

As such, foreign wineries and other alcohol manufacturers are effectively excluded from personally engaging in DtC alcohol shipping in the U.S.

Is there no way to DtC ship imports?

Even though a foreign winery itself cannot get licensed to ship DtC in any state, and therefore cannot sell or ship itself to any U.S. consumer, there are still some ways for U.S. consumers to receive DtC shipments that include imported wines, though they are not as extensive as those available for domestically produced wines.

As mentioned, most DtC shipping licenses are only available for domestic wineries, with federally issued Basic Permits and production licenses issued by their home state. However, it is not uncommon for a domestic winery to also act as an importer. As long as they hold the appropriate federal and state licenses (in addition to their wine production licenses and permits), a U.S. winery can import wine from out of the country and, in their capacity as the Primary American Source of those wines, DtC ship them as part of their overall catalog. 

A domestic winery DtC shipping wines that it imports would need to deal with what are called “not of own production” laws that restrict which wines a winery can DtC ship and are in effect in about two dozen states. The NOOP laws vary among states in their level of stricture, ranging from prohibiting shipping of any wines not produced at the specific address listed on the DtC shipping license (which can also affect domestic wineries that have multiple production facilities) to limiting a winery to only shipping the wines that they own (which would not necessarily be a barrier to imports). 

Besides going through a U.S. based wine producer, the other option for DtC shipping of imported wines would be to be shipped by a U.S. based wine retailer. NOOP laws are not a concern, as they do not apply to retailers (because they don’t produce anything). 

But retailer DtC shipping is severely limited—only 13 states allow any kind of interstate DtC shipping by retailers currently (and effective January 1, 2024, that number will go down to 12). If more states would allow retailer DtC shipping, that could be a big win for U.S. consumers, as many imported wines, particularly high-end and limited-production wines, are only available in select import shops in large markets, like New York, LA and Chicago. If one of the goals of DtC shipping is to increase consumer access to wines that they cannot find locally, then extending access to these stores would be a win.

Of course, more states could decide to issue DtC licenses to importers themselves, if they disapprove of licensing out-of-state retailers. Like wineries, importers are part of the supplier tier of the alcohol industry and are well versed in managing regulations across multiple states and paying taxes. And the few states that do currently license importers do not seem to have trouble with it. This would require extensive legislation to amend existing laws, which there may be little momentum for currently—but it is a consideration for further discussion.

U.S. wine consumers are a varied bunch, with wide-ranging tastes and interests, and they have certainly benefited from the expansion of DtC shipping over the last decade or two in being able to connect more easily to their favorite wineries in California or Oregon or New York. But under our current laws, for many connoisseurs in this country, a rare Burgundy not distributed in their state might as well still be in Burgundy.