Legal Question in Business Law in New York

Re: Online wine sales

The state of law in interstate shipment of wine and liquor is in the state of flux right now due to a recent Supreme Court decision and expected response from state regulators. In New York, I am not aware of a separate license for online sales for liquor stores. Licensed liquor stores rely on their license to sell online to New York residents and must comply with the terms of the license in their online operations as they must in their brick and mortar retail operations.

The problem is figuring out to what states you may legally ship (this varies depending on the product and other factors) if you are to take orders from out-of-state customers. Some states have been quite active in prosecuting out-of-state liquor stores selling online to their residents. As a practical matter, most online wine/liquor retailers do not ship to certain states at all and include disclaimers on their websites to that effect.

Feel free to contact my offices if you need advice on how to plan your online operations as my practice includes both e-commerce and liquor licensing.

The above response is in the nature of general information, is not legal advice and should not be relied on as such.