Starting next August, a household can receive up to 36 bottles of wine by mail. Delaware is the 49th state to legalize shipments to some degree.
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Marie and Shawn Wilson love driving from their home in central Delaware to vineyards and sampling cabernet sauvignon, pinot grigio and dry rosé.
They've been to local wineries and ones in neighboring states. They have a few favorites in Charlottesville, Virginia, where they belong to one estate's wine club.
When Marie turns 40 in two years, they hope a relative will watch their two young sons so they can tour California's fabled wine country in Napa and Sonoma valleys.
But one thing the Wilsons have never been able to do is have a winery ship bottles directly to their house. Her Virginia-based wine club sends her bottles to a friend who lives in Maryland.
"I get a quarterly shipment and I have to go to her house or when she comes over to my house we do my wine exchange,'' said Marie Wilson, who is a registered nurse. "It is pretty ridiculous."
That will change next summer.
Shortly after midnight on July 1, in the final hours of the General Assembly's legislative session, lawmakers approved a bill to allow vineyards to ship straight to homes in Delaware.
The near-unanimous vote culminated a three-decade effort to permit mail-order wine, a quest that this year finally overcame the strenuous objections of the state's powerful alcohol industry lobby. Every other state but Utah allows home shipments to some degree.
Wilson will have to wait a full year for her first direct shipment, however. The law doesn't take effect until Aug. 15, 2026 -- one year to the day after Gov. Matt Meyer signed the bill.
Nevertheless, Wilson is ecstatic that she'll be able to get three cases a year -- that's 36 standard 750 milliliter bottles -- without leaving home.
"I'm pretty excited about not having to go through a friend and making sure that my friend's home when the shipment's going to come so that they can ID her to get it,'' Marie Wilson said. "I can just set up the shipment for when I'm home so I can just receive it at my own house and then not have to go through anyone else."
Under the law, wineries can ship no more than 1,800 cases to Delaware a year, and must purchase a license every two years -- $400 if they ship up to 200 cases a year, and $3,600 if they ship more. Carriers such as UPS or FedEx also must pay a fee of $500 every two years, and their employees must receive training on age verification. You must be 21 to buy alcohol in Delaware.
In addition, the law will expire in five years unless lawmakers reauthorize home wine shipments. The state must also issue a study on the impact on wine sales at retail stores by June 2028.
State Rep. Mike Smith, the bill's chief sponsor, said he had to make compromises but is satisfied that the measure is now the law.
The fourth-term Republican said he was stunned while knocking on doors during his first campaign in 2018 when home wine delivery was the one issue residents were most passionate about. His district includes parts of Hockessin, Newark and Pike Creek.
"People want it, they enjoy it, they want it for entertainment or joy or whatever they want it for,'' Smith said. "A couple people told me, 'It reminds me of this great vacation that me and my husband went on or a trip with my family.' It's like nostalgic in a way."
"There's a lot of other things that we absolutely should be focused on, but if we want to be people-driven in our policy, we've got to do these things too, right?"
State Rep. Jeff Spiegelman, who co-sponsored the bill, credited his GOP colleague Smith for navigating the bill to passage through a gauntlet of longstanding opposition from alcohol distributors, retailers and members of the Teamsters union, who work in alcohol warehouses and drive trucks that transport beer, wine and liquor from distributors to retail stores.
"This bill was a pretty heavy compromise between all the players, but also I think all of the players, even those in opposition, kind of realized that being the 49th state in the country to do this is a little more than ridiculous,'' Spiegelman said.