If you use the Internet regularly, you probably cannot imagine how you lived without Amazon.com. At the click of a mouse, books, music, sporting goods, and more will arrive at your doorstep. Ever wanted to try real Spanish saffron but can't afford the plane ticket to Madrid? Visit Tienda.com and have some shipped to you. If only wine were so easy to buy online.

Because wine is a highly regulated product, many obstacles stand in the way of prospective online wine retailers. If you've already tried making an online wine purchase, you've noticed that one of the first questions you're asked is where you live. Your state of residence determines whether wine can be shipped to you.

Wine-Searcher.com and Snooth.com

If you live in Indiana and wish to purchase a bottle of Loire Chenin Blanc from a California online wine merchant, you will be denied due to shipping laws. However, this does not mean that Indiana residents should abandon the Internet entirely for their wine shopping needs.

Perhaps that bottle of Loire Chenin Blanc is available at a wine shop down the street. You could just call the shop and ask if they have it, but why not learn more about the Loire and Chenin Blanc and compare prices on other Chenin Blancs at the same time? Enter Wine-Searcher.com and Snooth.com.

Wine-searcher.com was founded in New Zealand in 1999. On the homepage, you begin by entering any information about a wine — vintage, producer, region — followed by your country and/or state of residence. You can even enter your zip code. At the click of a mouse, you learn which wine retailers nearby carry that wine and what they charge for it.

Snooth.com> takes the wine-searcher.com theme to a whole new level. Not only does it connect you to local retailers, it also connects you to other lovers of Loire Chenin Blanc, for example. You can learn which ones are worth buying while downloading a recipe to complement the one you eventually decide to buy!

Buying Direct from Wineries

All 50 states have wineries, and many of these have online wine shops. Again, where you live determines whether a winery can ship directly to you, but it is worth the effort to explore the shipping options available.

For example, Napa Valley sparkling wine producer Domaine Carneros can ship to Indiana residents! Indiana is one of three “Nondirect Three Tier” states, which means that Domaine Carneros must first send a shipment to a local distributor, then to a local retailer, and then, finally, to the consumer's home. That consumer will pay more for the shipment, thanks to taxes collected at each stage, and it could take weeks for the shipment to arrive, but at least shipping is possible.

There are many states to which even Domaine Carneros cannot ship. Besides the winery itself, a good resource for learning about your state's alcohol shipping regulations is the Wine Institute.

Online Wine Clearing Houses

Recessions are a nightmare for wineries, but they can pose great opportunities for wine lovers. During recessions, expensive wines just sit in warehouses, but wineries need to move them to make room for the new vintage that just rolled off the bottling line.

This reality has given rise to websites such as Cinderella Wine and The Wine Spies, which offer buyers exclusive one day only specials on exclusive wines at drastically reduced prices. Buyers can sign up for email alerts that announce deals as soon as they become available. Deals usually expire at midnight or earlier if the wine sells out quickly.