US Wine Industry: Napa, Sonoma winery-direct shipments surge

(NBBJ) - Shipments of wine directly to consumers from wineries in Napa and Sonoma counties, accounting for 69 percent of such shipments from U.S. sources, last year grew at 8.0 percent and 10.1 percent in value, respectively, helping push U.S. winery-to-consumer shipment value past that of wine exports for the first time, according to a new study.

The value of direct shipments to consumers was $714 million from Napa County in 2012 and $286 million from Sonoma County, amounting to 49 percent and 20 percent shares of the $1.46 billion in such transactions, according to an annual report by Colorado-based regulatory compliance data clearinghouse ShipCompliant and San Rafael-based trade publication Wines & Vines.

“We hope that the data in this report will act as a lens for wineries, magnifying the opportunities that abound in the direct-to-consumer channel,” said Jason Eckenroth, ShipCompliant chief executive officer. The study (shipcompliant.com/shippingreport) anonymously compared millions of transactions through ShipCompliant’s software, which is incorporated into a number of direct-to-consumer order-processing systems, with the magazine’s database of more than 7,400 wineries.