Amazon.com: Earth's Biggest Wine Cellar?

theodp writes "Ever get carded by your FedEx guy? You will. Several writers at GeekWire had just unboxed, uncorked and polished off their first bottle of Amazon wine, only to have their buzz killed by the need to cover Steven Sinofsky's unexpected exit from Microsoft. With the caveat that per-order shipping charges will discourage those watching their pennies from ordering single bottles of inexpensive wine, GeekWire gave the overall Amazon wine buying experience a thumbs-up." Since Amazon-owned Woot's been selling wine for a while, it may be a stretch to call it new for Amazon, but their main site is known to many more people.

Comments

Not in Alabama

[Anonymous Coward]

Alcohol is a state run for profit monopoly here. Buy it from the state or not at all. They even have special state run stores here. Shipping alcohol can get you jail time.

Re:Not in Alabama

[jythie]

Pennsylvania is the same way. Every election cycle they talk about privatizing.. and every time it quietly gets shelves for, publicly, some moralistic reason.. but privately I suspect they just really do not want to give up the power, and the PA liqueur institution is pretty powerful (not to mention corrupt).

Re:Not in Alabama

[Anonymous Coward]

You're welcome, Major Asshole.

Re:Not in Alabama

[Gunnut1124]

Last time we let you people transport alcohol you invented NASCAR and we are NOT going to let that happen again.

Re:Not in Alabama

[darjen]

I am from Ohio and I visit friends in PA ocasionally. I used to buy a case of Yuengling and bring it back with me. Although we have our own dumb alcohol laws here, I think PA really does take the cake as far as ridiculous regulation goes.

Re:Not in Alabama

[sargon666777]

Couldnt agree with you more.. try getting a bottle of Everclear here... (From Wikipedia) Consumers may legally purchase Everclear in Pennsylvania but must first obtain a permit for it and agree that it shall not be consumed as beverage alcohol and shall not be furnished for any reason to another person

Re:Not in Alabama

[T5]

Not in Tennessee either. We have a rich history of insane alcohol laws and political opposition. For example, a former Speaker of the House, Ned Ray McWherter, who owned a beer distributorship at the time, cleverly crafted the tax schedules for keg beer to exclude, for example, Guinness, which came in an odd-sized keg compared to the domestics which McWherter's distributorship sold. No tax schedule for that size meant that it was not legal to sell here. IIRC it was about a decade after his tenure before the tax schedules were amended to allow for other sizes of kegs.

Even today a liquor license is required to sell beer > 6% ABV. This, of course, applies to wine as well. This means that we get nothing but the low gravity beers in our grocery stores and no wine at all. And the prices at the liquor stores for high gravity beer (what little you can find) and wine are much higher as a result than, for example, in Georgia. Grocery chains like Trader Joe's and Publix are just now making inroads into our great state, largely because of the lunacy of restricted alcohol sales.

Re:Not in Alabama

[kiwimate]

Pennsylvania is insane. I moved here 12 years ago from New Zealand and even today it still amazes me that we have these silly and anachronistic laws.

PA wines and spirits shops sell from the same catalog. It means it's all the same price. (Many years ago, before I knew better, I went into a shop and asked about a case discount. The shop clerk didn't understand what I meant.)

That price, by the way, includes an 18% tax known as the Johnstown Flood Tax. (Short version: a city of 30,000 was wiped out in 1936 by a flood. 76 years later, every time you buy a bottle of wine or scotch or gin in Pennsylvania, you're still paying for Johnstown to be rebuilt.)

Recently, an amazingly innovative push in the Liquor Control Board has allowed some supermarkets to sell wine. (This is sarcasm.) They are still wine and spirits shops, so you go into a separate room and check out separately from the assistants who ring up your groceries. One wonders why they even bothered.

A wine and liquor store cannot sell beer. A beer distributor sells beer by the case. You must buy a complete case. If you go to a specialized store (e.g. a deli that is licensed), you can buy by the six-pack - but only two. My wife and I once went to a local deli to buy three six-packs. The clerk rang us up and told my wife to walk out with one six-pack, then for me to follow her five seconds later with the other two. If we walked out together with all three six-packs, we'd be breaking the law.

It's incredibly backwards. There was a case some time ago (2010? 2011?) which claimed that the law against shipping wine into PA (and for some other states) was discriminatory and the state had to treat PA wine makers & external wine makes with the same regulations. I forget what the outcome was - I think you now can order directly from the winery, but only if they've been approved by the state.

Re:Not in Alabama

[pwizard2]

It used to, before the Free the Hops people got involved.

Ad?

[Anonymous Coward]

... is there a story here? Or is this just an ad for something?

Re:Ad?

[tgd]

... is there a story here? Or is this just an ad for something?

Everything on Slashdot is either an ad, an anti-something rantfest designed to whip up their base to view more ads, or (in a more meta sense) an ad designed to whip up their base to complain about ads (like this) all while seeing ads.

That's Slashdot. The key is to tune out the noise to get the occasional interesting signal. Or to play the "lets go trolling and see if we can be subtle enough to get modded up for it!" game.

Why is this surprising?

[bhartman34]

You have to be 21 to buy alcohol. Why wouldn't you get carded?

Re:Why is this surprising?

[bhartman34]

And yet you can get married at 16. You people have your priorities so arse backwards it's amazing you survive.

In most jurisdictions in the U.S., marriage under the age of 18 requires parental consent. The marrying age being lower than the drinking age has at least one benefit: You're less likely to show up drunk for your wedding. ;)

I think it's much more of a scandal that the driving age is lower than the drinking age. I would rather kids get some experience with alcohol's effects (moreso than just sneaking alcohol from their parents' liquor cabinet) before they started driving. It seems like a bad idea to me to have kids driving around without experience of how alcohol can affect them if they decide to get behind the wheel.

Power?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's more about revenue.

There's nothing more appealing to a politician that a revenue stream to buy votes - either with entitlements, subsidies (business or otherwise) or tax cuts.

"Do Not Deliver to an Intoxicated Peson"

[theodp]

Special Delivery Instructions

Re:Please

[houghi]

You can buy anything ate any supermarket here. We even have beer tastings in the supermarkets. Yes, I live in a state and I have seen the same happening in other states.

The states I am talking about? Flanders, Bavaria among many others.

Re:Please

[paiute]

Minnesota allows you to do this. And we have winter and wolves. What could be more fun than wolf hunting in the snow?

Making the wolves write your name in the snow at gunpoint.

Re:It will be American wine to American drinkers

[Anonymous Coward]

Malbec.
Malbec is what goes with hamburgers.

Re:Nothing

[tehcyder]

Nothing tastes like Chardonnay from plastic cup

Obviously, you've never tasted Chardonnay from a cardboard box.

A cardboard box? We used to dream of drinking Chardonnay from a cardboard box. When I were young we drank our Chardonnay from a hole in the road. And we were grateful.