BOULDER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In the United States, 43 out of the 50 states allow direct shipment of wine to consumers, and these consumers continue to embrace this wine-by-mail option. The newly released 2016 Direct-to-Consumer Wine Shipping Report issued by ShipCompliant and Wines & Vines shows the volume of winery shipments to consumers grew at a rate four times greater than the overall U.S. retail off-premise wine market grew in 2015.
The report announced that in 2015, the volume of wine shipped from wineries to consumers increased by 8.5% over 2014. This is a rate of growth four times that of the 2% sales volume increase off-premise channels experienced, according to Nielsen. Wineries shipped over 4.2 million cases of wine in 2015, which represented $1.97 billion in sales, an 8.1% increase over 2014.
The 2016 edition of the annual Direct-to-Consumer Wine Shipping report from ShipCompliant and Wines & Vines can be downloaded for free at www.shipcompliant.com/shippingreport.
Other highlights in the report include:
• Napa wineries reached an all-time high shipping record in 2015: over $1 billion worth of wine was shipped directly to consumers.
• Consumers continued to embrace Oregon wine, with its shipments increasing by 14.6% in 2015.
• Massachusetts wine lovers ordered $27.5 million worth of wine in the first year of legal direct-to-consumer shipping.
• Shipments of Cabernet Sauvignon led all other varietals, representing 30% of all sales of direct-shipped wines.
• The District of Columbia, California, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming saw the most wine shipped directly to consumers on a per capita basis.
• Wines shipped directly to consumers remain an expensive proposition, with the average bottle of wine shipped costing $38.23.
“We are seeing the direct distribution channel for wine continuing to be a significant source of sales for wineries, and an increasingly desirable way for consumers to obtain wines that they can’t find in their local retail outlets,” said Jeff Carroll, Vice President of Compliance & Strategy, ShipCompliant.
The annual Direct-to-Consumer Wine Shipping Report is based on millions of anonymized transactions, processed through ShipCompliant’s compliance platform and Wines & Vines’ exclusive database of all 8,638 wineries, which depict the total sales volume and value of wines shipped directly from wineries to consumers in the United States.
About ShipCompliant
A division of Sovos Compliance, ShipCompliant is the industry leader in creating SaaS compliance and transaction platforms for the beverage alcohol industry. ShipCompliant makes products people use and love, reducing time to market and enabling new sales channels for wineries, breweries, distilleries, and importers of beverage alcohol products. ShipCompliant’s comprehensive web-based tools offer robust and seamless integration with order management, e-commerce, point-of-sale, and fulfillment systems, ensuring compliance at each step in the process. For more information, please visit www.shipcompliant.com.
About Wines & Vines
Wines & Vines offers a comprehensive collection of products providing news, information, and marketing and research capabilities. Its monthly magazine, Wine & Vines, and its Directory/Buyer’s Guide and Online Marketing System provide a wide range of information solutions to the wine and grape industry. For more information visit www.winesandvines.com.
