How to sell wine online in the UK: licences, age checks, shipping and the shop

To sell wine online in the UK, you need a premises licence for the place your orders are dispatched from, a designated premises supervisor who holds a personal licence, and a written age verification policy. If you make the wine, you also need producer approval from HMRC, and if you sell to shops or restaurants as well as the public, you need AWRS registration. With those in place, a shop on your own website and a courier that accepts wine let you sell across Great Britain.

The licence goes where the wine leaves from

Under section 190 of the Licensing Act 2003, an online sale takes place where the wine is picked for the order, not where the customer lives. The Home Office’s licensing guidance gives the example plainly: a call centre taking orders needs no licence, but the warehouse where the wine is stored, selected and dispatched does.

For a vineyard, that usually means one licence covers everything. A premises licence can authorise sales for drinking on site and sales to take away, so a cellar door and an online shop dispatching from the same building can share it. Apply for both activities, with the hours you want for each. If your orders ship from a separate warehouse, that site needs its own licence. If a fulfilment company holds and sends your stock, ask your council’s licensing team how that arrangement should be licensed before you sign.

Premises licences come from your local council. The fees depend on the rateable value of the building:

Band	Rateable value	New licence	Annual fee
A	Up to £4,300	£100	£70
B	£4,301 to £33,000	£190	£180
C	£33,001 to £87,000	£315	£295
D	£87,001 to £125,000	£450	£320
E	Over £125,000	£635	£350

Source: Home Office alcohol licensing fee levels.

A personal licence holder to authorise sales

Every premises licence names a designated premises supervisor, who holds a personal licence and runs the business day to day. Every sale is then authorised by a personal licence holder.

To get a personal licence in England or Wales, you need to be 18 or over, pass an accredited qualification such as the Level 2 Award for Personal Licence Holders, and get a basic criminal record check. You apply to your local council, and the fee is £37. Since 2015, personal licences in England and Wales last indefinitely. Full details are on gov.uk.

For fairs, festivals and pop-up tastings away from the vineyard, a Temporary Event Notice costs £21 and covers events of up to 499 people for up to seven days. A personal licence holder can give 50 a year.

Age checks for online orders

Selling alcohol to anyone under 18 is an offence. A seller who took all reasonable steps to check the buyer’s age has a defence, so your process is what protects you.

Every premises licence in England and Wales must include an age verification policy. It requires photo ID with a date of birth and a hologram or UV mark from anyone who looks under 18, or under a higher age you choose. Since 15 September 2026, the policy can also accept digital ID from a provider on the government’s register of approved services.

For online sales, a good process has three parts:

1. At checkout, customers confirm they’re 18 or over and give a date of birth
2. At dispatch, orders go with a courier service that checks age on delivery
3. At the door, the courier hands the wine to an adult and returns it if nobody suitable is home

Challenge 25, asking anyone who looks under 25 for ID, is best practice in England and Wales and a legal condition for shops in Scotland. Using it for deliveries too keeps every order on the safe side.

Scotland and Wales

Scotland follows the same rule: the sale happens where the wine is dispatched. Scottish licensing adds a few duties for sellers dispatching from Scotland. Each delivery is recorded in a day book at the premises, with the buyer’s name, address and what they bought. Deliveries take place between 6am and midnight. Personal licence holders take refresher training every five years and renew every ten.

Minimum unit pricing applies in both nations. Wine dispatched from premises in Scotland or Wales must sell for at least 65p per unit of alcohol. The formula is 0.65 × ABV × volume in litres, so a 75cl bottle at 12% has a floor of £5.85. Wales raised its minimum from 50p to 65p on 1 October 2026, matching Scotland. An English winery delivering to customers in Wales sells from England, so the Welsh minimum applies to Welsh sellers.

Across England and Wales, wine must also sell for at least the duty plus VAT on it. For most wineries that floor is far below any real price.

Selling to trade as well: AWRS

If you sell to shops, restaurants or other businesses that resell your wine, you need to register with HMRC’s Alcohol Wholesaler Registration Scheme before you start. HMRC lists vineyards and wine producers by name. Apply at least 45 days ahead.

A winery selling only to the public doesn’t need AWRS. An occasional sale to a local restaurant that has run short also sits outside it.

Duty and producer approval

Wineries need an alcoholic products producer approval from HMRC before they start production, whatever their size. Duty is paid when the wine leaves duty suspension, by the 25th of the following month. I cover the rates and a duty-per-bottle table in UK wine duty explained.

Shipping wine safely

Royal Mail accepts wine from business account holders on its tracked and Special Delivery services and through Parcelforce. Each parcel can carry up to 5 litres and no more than eight items, so a case of six 75cl bottles travels as one parcel and a case of twelve as two. Bottles are sealed in polythene with absorbent cushioning, the box is marked fragile, and your name and address go on the outside. Royal Mail’s business guidelines have the full list.

Other couriers carry wine on their own terms, so check each one’s alcohol policy and age-check options before you choose.

Shipping is also a pricing decision. Many wineries set free delivery at six or twelve bottles, which nudges a two-bottle order up to a case.

A shop that sells

The licence lets you sell. The shop decides how much you sell.

• Keep the shop on your own website, so every wine page ranks under your name. Many wine shop platforms load in a frame or on a separate domain that Google barely sees. My guide to winery website design shows how to check yours
• Give each wine a page with the vintage, grapes, tasting notes, food pairings, price and a clear button to buy
• Sell by the case, with mixed cases and a clear price per bottle at six and twelve
• Put your club beside the shop, because a club member’s second and third orders are where the margin is
• Ask for an email address at every order, so the next release has somewhere to go

When I rebuilt the website for Jeff Runquist Wines, the shop moved fully inside the site and every wine got its own page. Online wine sales grew by 245% over twelve months.

Selling to customers abroad

Shipping wine from Great Britain to consumers in the EU means paying duty and VAT in each destination country and clearing customs, which usually needs a tax representative there. Most small producers reach EU customers through an importer or a fulfilment partner based in the EU.

Your launch checklist

1. Apply for a premises licence at the site your orders will ship from
2. Get a personal licence for yourself or a manager, and name them as supervisor
3. Write your age verification policy and set up date of birth checks at checkout
4. Register with AWRS if you will sell to trade
5. Confirm your HMRC producer approval and duty returns are in order
6. Open a business account with a courier that accepts wine and checks age on delivery
7. Build the shop on your own site, with a page for every wine

If you’d like the shop built for you, see winery website design and online shops. For a review of what you have now, start with a marketing audit.