Buying good Italian wine online from the USA
by John
(Westerly, Rhode Island)
I was looking to buy good Italian wine online from here in the USA and stumbled across your site. I remembered visiting your site a long while back and noticed a number of changes. You used to mention that you would ship the wines if anyone ordered but I don't see that stated any more.
Andrew's reply: First of all I am glad to have you back on the site and I hope you become a regular customer!
What you have noticed about me not selling the wines directly any more is very true. The difficulty was that Maria (my wife) and I were buying the wines from the smaller estates ourselves and shipping out to buyers.
The big problem is that most of our buyers are in the USA and it is nearly impossible to ship wine directly to individuals in the USA without running into endless problems with US customs and the DEA.
All the paperwork, costs and complications were just too much for us to manage. We don't have the resources of the big online wine merchants – just a genuine love for the wines, peoples and territories that produce them.
Unfortunately in today's big business and bureaucratic world that isn't always enough!
Good news though ...since we first started the site many of the wines we feature from the smaller family run Italian vineyards are now being stocked by the the larger online wine merchants who have stocks in the USA.