shiiping in the us

The short answer is that in the US all alcohol sales laws are determined by the individual states, there is no practical federal law on sales. The US Supreme Court has loosened things up recently, hence Florida is on the shipping list now where it wasn't a year ago.

Restrictions vary from state to state. A state can determine that wines can not be shipped into it for individuals. Recent legal decisions have opened up more states. However, there are two parts to effective laws. There is the law itself and what is done to enforce the law, if anything.There are a lot of laws on the book that now seem quaint and silly that are not or seldom enforced. For example, the city where I live still has laws that make it illegal to use a player piano or megaphone on the sidewalk in front of a store to attract business. Many of the younger generation have never even seen one of these devices.

The practical matter is that many retailers in states such as California, New York, Missouri and many others have long managed to get wines to people in states that do not officially allow shipping into them. However, many of these sellers will not arrange for shipments to the few states where shipping wine into them is a felony. Sometimes the seller of the wine transfers legal title of the wine to the buyer while the wine is still in the sellers state and only acts as an agent of the buyer to engage a shipper for shipping the wine from the person buying the wine. Ordering directly from a wine company is another matter. A wine company that does not have current distribution in a state may not want to upset the officials in the state, because the company might want to distribute wine in the state in the future. Also some large chain stores are located in nearly all states. Some of their stores may sell wine, and some may not. Many such stores will sell items, over websites, that are not carried in local stores in some areas. However they are not likely to ship wine to a state where they have a store and the local laws do not allow direct shipping.