Amazon.com starts selling wine

Amazon has decided to start using their marketing muscle and hugely popular recommendation engine to start getting booze on your doorstep.

Not too long ago, Amazon invested US$30 million in Wineshopper.com only to see that site go belly-up. Currently, they have a small partnership with Wine.com where Wine.com sells gift baskets on their site, but not wine.

Some articles are stating that Amazon.com is going to hire a Senior Wine Buyer and handle things themselves. Decanter and others are saying that they have increased their partnership with Wine.com and all orders will be directed from Amazon to Wine.com.

Though Wine.com has been successful in the last year, their business practices have come under quite a bit of public scrutiny of late due to the fact that they ordered a bunch of wine from other retailers and had it shipped to states that the retailers should not have shipped to, then proceeded to tattle-tale to state Attorney's General. Most wine bloggers are calling it "winegate" now after Alder Yarrow's row with them.

Though I agree with Alder that Wine.com was pretty slimy to do business this way, it seems to have paid off for them if the Amazon.com deal is true.

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