The rules and regulations about shipping wine vary significantly from one state to another. Numerous laws dictate how wine moves across the country. Despite its impressive popularity, shipping rules can feel restricting, extensive, and notoriously confusing.
Is It Legal to Ship Wine?
Technically, it is legal to ship wine within the United States. Courier companies have different protocols for sending wine regardless of the state. Even if you can figure out a carrier, municipal, state, and federal rules still need to be considered.
How to Ship Wine?
You might be surprised to learn some states do not allow individual consumers to make any kind of wine shipments to one another. States such as Kentucky, Mississippi, and Utah can charge shippers with a felony for directly shipping wine to consumers. Even Arizona, Arkansas, Montana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Texas do not allow shipping wine to residents. However, Alaska, Florida, and Minnesota have quite lenient terms and conditions.
The shipping laws allow licensed wine shippers to ship wine, more commonly referred to as companies approved to manufacture, sell, and distribute wine. If this is your business, you can ship wine only after agreeing to the necessary alcohol shipping contracts. If you do not have a proper license and sign the special shipping agreement, you will not be able to ship wine and can face steep fines upon doing so.
However, some universal rules apply to all US states, such as advising the carrier your package contains alcohol, paying a surcharge, and the adult signature requirement. Other than these, when the bottles cross borders, laws pertaining to both states come into effect. The sender and receiver must both be approved to send and receive alcohol legally.
There are myriad rules that apply in different circumstances. A reputable and knowledgeable retailer would be able to provide this information.
How to Pack Wine for Shipping?
Wine often comes in different types of glass bottles that are more fragile compared to plastic containers. This is why you must be especially careful when shipping these delicate vessels. To safely ship your wine, you can use cardboard boxes that section each bottle, preventing them from smashing against each other. A good quality bubble wrap can provide additional safety to your specialty drink bottles. After this, secure the packages with industrial-grade adhesive, stack them into the delivery truck, and you’re good to go.
Get Started with Custom Wine Packaging
Now you can safely ship your wine nationwide with our affordable, convenient, and environment-friendly packages. We stock a vast supply of best-in-class wine shipping boxes for all sizes and shapes of bottles. However, we can also customize the packages to any specific dimension you need. If you comply with interstate alcohol shipping laws, you can effectively and safely transport your wine to your customers in our recycled cardboard packaging. To get started, request a quote here.
