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Amazon to start selling wine

Posted Mar 07 2008, 09:08 AM by Kim Peterson
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Selling wine online in this country is pretty screwed up. Or, as the Financial Times so elegantly stated, it's "a business fraught with regulatory complexities and littered with the wreckage of previous failures."

But Amazon is up for the task, and is recruiting a senior wine buyer on its site. I'd like to volunteer, but my knowledge of wine basically comes from what I learned in "Sideways." Amazon has been interested in this area for some time, having spent $30 million nine years ago for a 45% stake of Wineshopper.com. Oops, Wineshopper was folded into Wine.com the next year.

Maybe Amazon can help straighten out the convoluted mess that is selling wine online. Retailers can only ship wine to 26 states. Wineries and retailers follow different rules. FreetheGrapes.org has a nice summary of this complex issue. And the competition is nasty. Online wine retailer Wine.com went so far as to conduct its own sting operation, telling state regulators whenever it found that its rivals were violating wine-shipping laws.

Amazon already sells groceries and gourmet foods on its site, including $160 gift baskets (sans wine) from partner Wine.com. The grocery category is doing well enough that Amazon is testing a fresh foods delivery service, called Amazon Fresh, in Seattle. Wine and beer will likely be included in that service in the future.

Amazon shares fell more than 3% Thursday to close at $62.74.

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Comments

 

It's never going work.

Joe (Posted 03.07.08 12:11 PM)

Good news under-age drinkers, a solution to your problem!

Mr. X (Posted 03.07.08 12:24 PM)

just what we need another place under aged people can buy alcohol.

Perhaps they will also branch out into selling drugs?

Karen Smith (Posted 03.07.08 12:30 PM)

Right, Mr X - Gourmet wine is just the ticket that teens who want to get drunk are waiting for

OSU (Posted 03.07.08 12:52 PM)

The crap people worry about in this country.

Selling wine online, oh no, please think of the children.

How about the economy and the looming recession?

Joe Schmoe (Posted 03.07.08 12:56 PM)

Heaven forbid that kids get booze easier than illegal drugs. A 20 year old cannot buy a six pack but only has to stand on the corner to buy any illegal drug on the market, grown, packaged, shipped and distributed by the DEA and the US Military. I think America has bigger issues to worry about than buying wine on the internet.

Paul (Posted 03.07.08 12:58 PM)

i dont see that as a bad thing. and i would be pretty dang happy if they started selling drugs too...your making it sound like it would be a bad thing or somethin...

mr. cannabis (Posted 03.07.08 1:01 PM)

we spend more time and moeny worried about "under-aged drinking" when drugs are what is rotting this country and our youth from the core.  We as a collective group in the US need to sit down and re-consider what battles we want to fight.  I for 1 would rather advocate better education at home and by the community and more lax rules with Alcohol enforcement and More financial and Law enforcement efforts put forth towards the growing problem of Drugs.  We have to pick our battles we cant fight em all, it stretches us too thin

Dusty D (Posted 03.07.08 1:03 PM)

Are people really too lazy to get up and go to the store?  Good luck Amazon!

The Virginian (Posted 03.07.08 1:04 PM)

they might be able to get away with a disclosure saying something to the effect of I swear that I am of age to purchase alcholol and do not in anyway hold amazon responsible for any damages caused from the sale

joebob (Posted 03.07.08 1:04 PM)

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