A winemaker in the Langhe has approached me with an idea to sell wines from small producers directly to consumers in the United States. I am not inclined to take him up on this opportunity, but I am kicking the tires nonetheless, mainly because I am trying to figure out, legally, how it can be done outside of the 3-tier system. I have bought many wines in the U.S. from companies that import the wine themselves, and then solicit offers to purchase via e-mail. Is that a grey area in the law or do some states permit that and I just need to figure out the right state to operate from? For my home state, North Carolina, I can only find authority permitting wineries to sell wines directly to consumers, but not importers. Any help or direction that can be provided is most appreciated.
Best regards,
Jeff Henson
A lot of the gray market retailers use a third party importer like Skyliner or CID. However Skyliner for example is an importer and retailer because he has his own three tier license. AFAIK these licenses mostly exist in CA.
Thank you Andrew. For further amplification of what I have in mind, I copied and pasted this from another company that is doing what I am thinking of doing, but only on a much smaller scale:
“Having appreciated the benefits of the U.S. model, I set about solving the legal, logistical, compliance and other issues related to enabling European wineries to offer mailing lists like their U.S. counterparts. This has been a massive undertaking, but with the help of the industry’s best legal and logistics partners and a dedicated team of wine industry veterans in the U.S. and Europe, we have succeeded in solving these challenges. Now for the first time, [REDACTED] enables you to buy top European wines you want the way you want to — direct from the domaine.
there are several states in the USA where this can be done; CA and DC (where vinconnect operates) are the most popular.
you just need to start a business and go from there!