‘A little more than ridiculous’: 3-decade effort to let wineries ship directly to Delaware homes comes to fruition

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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.

‘Gives us a chance to expand our business’

Spiegelman, who represents the Middletown-Smyrna area, said the new law will benefit Delaware businesses such as Harvest Ridge Winery in Marydel, a rural area he represents. Now the winery can ship bottles all around the state.

“They’ll be able to ship it to Wilmington, because otherwise somebody from Wilmington would have to drive all the way down to Marydel in order to pick up their wine,’’ Spiegelman said.

“That meant that Harvest Ridge Winery couldn’t sell to the customers of their own state, even though the state’s the second smallest one in the nation. Harvest Ridge Winery had no problem shipping to Baltimore. So it’s just, come on, come on now.’’

Chuck Nunan, who founded Harvest Ridge on a 190-acre property in western Kent County 11 years ago, said he’s been frustrated that until now state law prohibited him from shipping bottles to residents of his own state.

“It gives us a chance to expand our business,’’ he said. “We have a wine club where we have 3,000 members in Delaware.”

The new law will help the winery flourish and gain even more members because Delawareans won’t have to drive the more than 50 miles to his farm if they live in Wilmington to the north or Rehoboth Beach to the south.

Xavi DeCaire, of Hockessin, is one of Smith’s constituents who has been pushing for home wine shipments for years. He credited his legislator for getting the bill passed but still doesn’t like some provisions, especially the one-year pause and the volume limits on consumers.

“How do you pass a piece of legislation that everybody’s been waiting for but say, ‘Sorry you got to wait another year before it takes effect?’” DeCaire asked. “Doesn’t make sense.”

Still, DeCaire said, the situation is better than has existed in Delaware for so long.

He cited the example of someone who has visited a California winery, finds some vintages extraordinary, and says, “‘Oh my God, I’d love to have some of this?’”

Until now, the vintner could only say, “Well if you live in Delaware, I can’t ship it to you.”