Bill allowing wineries to ship directly to Maryland residents passes in House, Senate

The House passed the bill Saturday, while the bill passed in the Senate Monday night.

The recent passage of two bills could make shipping wine to customers in Maryland legal for the first time since 1933.

The House passed the bill Friday while the Senate passed their version of the bill Monday night. The bill is now on its way to Gov. Martin O'Malley to be passed into law.

Thirty-seven states or 75 percent of the United States and the District of Columbia allow adult consumers to have wine mailed directly to their homes.

The system in place monitors the sale of alcoholic products through a system in which wine is shipped first to a wholesaler in Maryland, which sells products to a distributor who then transports the wine to retailers.

The process was put in place to keep alcohol out of the hands of minors, but for local wineries these are lost sales.

"It would be a tremendous benefit to be able to ship wine that’s ordered, especially after the large wine festivals," said Ray Brasfield, president of the Maryland Winery Association and owner of Cygnus Wine Cellars in Manchester. "I’m here in the middle of the state and I get calls and emails from time to time from people over on the Eastern Shore and western Maryland who want to know how they can buy my wine. It would be a major advantage to put it on the truck and ship it."

The bill would allow a limited number of cases of wine from in-state and out-of-state wineries to be mailed directly to residents.

"Every opportunity that we have to sell a bottle of wine should be available to us and those sorts of sales at this point are not," said Brasfield.

Similar legislation has been introduced during the past three years in the Maryland General Assembly but has not passed.