Mississippi Set to Become the 48th State for Winery DTC, Despite Some Challenges

Mississippi is set to open for winery DTC shipments for the first time on July 1, 2025, following a flurry of legislative activity that resulted in the signing of SB 2145 on February 26th. Although a new state opening is extremely rare these days and is normally cause for much celebration, wineries should be pretty cautious of the multiple flaws in this bill. Below, we explore the good, the bad and the ugly parts of this new law.

The Good

Mississippi becomes the 48th state to open for winery DTC, leaving only Utah, Delaware and Rhode Island as states that still prohibit offsite wine shipments. Without the challenges in the next two sections, adding a brand new state would be cause for rejoice from wineries that ship directly to consumers. The permit fee is also only $100, making it one of the more reasonable states on that front.

The Bad

The biggest problems with this bill are:

• Wineries can only ship products that are not contracted through Mississippi distributors, brokers, and solicitors within the state, except for “wines which are very limited in quantity and are commonly referred to by the broker as highly allocated items noted as ‘Allocated Item - See Broker’ on the TAP Alcoholic Beverage Control Division of the Department of Revenue website”
• Licensed wine shippers, companies that transport wine, and the consumers they ship to can face steep penalties for violations of the direct shipping laws. “Any person who makes, participates in, transports, imports or receives a sale or shipment of wine in violation of Sections 1 through 9 of this act is guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00) or imprisonment in the county jail for not more than six (6) months, or both.  Each sale or shipment in violation of Sections 1 through 9 of this act shall constitute a separate offense”
  

Wine Institute, who ended up opposing the bill at the end of the process, is encouraging wineries to wait for the regulations to be finalized before beginning the application process because of these issues.

The Ugly

The bill also has some provisions that just are suboptimal for wineries:

• A markup tax of 15.5% on the retail value of the wine will apply to all bottles sold. It’s unclear at this point whether wineries would also have to register to collect and separately remit Mississippi sales tax.
• Wineries can not ship “light wine” (wine that contains 5% or less alcohol by weight) 
• Fulfillment houses shipping on behalf of wineries need to get a license to ship, but common carriers do not
• The volume limit is 12 cases per “address”, and not per individual
  

Conclusion

We’ll see how the regulations look when the department releases more information and makes the forms available. It’s always good to have a new state, especially after an overall slowdown in winery DTC sales, but it appears the challenges of this bill may outweigh the advantages of having a new DTC market of consumers.