Amazon.com Will Start Selling Wine

The internet's monolithic online retailer, Amazon.com, is poised to begin selling wine through their Marketplace sometime later this month. See Also: --Pavle Milic's Wine-Making Adventure --5 Ways to Open a Bottle of Wine (Without a Corkscrew) We can only imagine how handy Amazon.com's customer review system will be once it's...

By Ando Muneno

October 3, 2012

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The internet's monolithic online retailer, Amazon.com, is poised to begin selling wine through their Marketplace sometime later this month.

We can only imagine how handy Amazon.com's customer review system will be once it's applied to the wide world of cheeky vintages. Maybe it'll be able to give us more diverse answers to the age old question, "Which wine pairs best with a Taco Bell Crunch Wrap?"

Obviously this isn't Amazon.com's first foray into the wine business. Just last year they stopped shipping wines due to the complexity of complying with differing alcohol regulations in different states. Their new program should sidestep these issues by placing the onus of shipping upon the individual wine producers.

The details of that deal between Amazon.com and wine producers appear to include Amazon.com charging a $40 monthly fee as well as taking a 15% commission. That sounds awfully steep but Amazon.com does have a massive presence and it's being reported that they might be twisting the arms of their shippers, like UPS, to pass along shipping discounts to their affiliates.

Presumably, once they get all the kinks worked out, this system will provide you a one-stop shop for your next Sideways drinking party.

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