Sell wine online in the EU: excise, age checks, labels and shipping

In short: to sell wine online in the EU you need a registered business, duty-paid stock from a producer or importer, an age check before the order, and a product page with the alcohol strength and allergens. Selling to consumers in another EU country moves the excise duty to the buyer's country: you register and guarantee the duty there before each shipment.

This guide is for wine shops, wineries, importers and specialist retailers who want to sell wine, beer or spirits to consumers online anywhere in the EU. The common rules come from EU law that applies in every member state: the excise Directive (EU) 2020/262, the minimum excise rates in Directive 92/84/EEC, the wine labelling rules and the Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU. Licences, age limits, advertising and tax stamps are national, so we use Bulgaria as a worked example where a national rule needs one. Your excise office confirms what applies to you.

Do you need a licence to sell wine online?

EU law does not license the retail sale of wine. Excise rules license the production and storage of alcohol under duty suspension, in what EU law calls a tax warehouse. A retailer who buys bottled wine on which the excise duty has already been paid, from a producer or importer, is outside that licensing. Whether you also need a national or local licence to sell alcohol at retail is set by each member state, and sometimes by the municipality, so check it with your excise office before the first order.

Excise duty becomes due when the goods leave the tax warehouse for consumption; from then on it is part of the price you pay your supplier.

What you do	What you typically need	Who decides
Sell duty-paid bottles bought from a producer or importer to consumers in your own country	A registered business, plus any national or local retail alcohol licence	Your country's law and, in some countries, the municipality
Make your own wine and sell it online	Registration or authorisation of the winery for excise purposes, depending on volume	The excise authority where the winery is located
Produce or store alcohol under duty suspension	Authorisation as a tax warehouse keeper	The excise authority
Ship to consumers in another EU country	Registration and a duty guarantee in the buyer's country before dispatch	The excise authority of the destination country

Example: selling wine online from Bulgaria

Under the Bulgarian Excise Duties and Tax Warehouses Act (in Bulgarian), a retailer of duty-paid wine, beer and spirits needs no excise licence. Article 99(6) bans advertising excise goods for sale, including online, but exempts electronic stores that offer alcohol on which the duty is paid, with tax stamps on the spirits. An independent small winemaker producing up to 1,000 hectolitres a year registers the winery with the Customs Agency before starting (Articles 56 and 57). Like every Bulgarian online store, a wine shop also registers with the NRA, the National Revenue Agency, before the first sale; see Ordinance N-18 for online stores.

How much is the excise duty on wine?

The EU minimum excise rate for still and sparkling wine is zero, under Article 5 of Directive 92/84/EEC. Each member state sets its own rate at or above the minimum, so wine carries no excise duty in some countries and a duty per hectolitre in others. Wine remains an excise good everywhere, even where the rate is zero: its movement, documents and cross-border sales follow the excise rules.

Drink	EU minimum rate (Directive 92/84/EEC)	Example: Bulgaria
Still and sparkling wine	€0	€0
Beer	€0.748 per hectolitre per degree Plato, or €1.87 per hectolitre per degree of alcohol	€0.77 per hectolitre per degree Plato
Intermediate products (port, sherry, vermouth)	€45 per hectolitre of product	€46.02 per hectolitre
Spirits (whisky, vodka, gin, brandy)	€550 per hectolitre of pure alcohol	€562.42 per hectolitre of pure alcohol

The directive states the minimums in ECU, converted to euro at one to one. The Bulgarian rates come from Article 31 of the Bulgarian act, converted from leva at the fixed rate of 1.95583.

When does a bottle need a tax stamp?

Tax stamps are a national requirement: some member states require a stamp on bottles of spirits released for consumption on their territory, and others do not. Wine usually falls outside stamp schemes, but check the rule in every country where you sell. A bottle stamped for one country is generally not valid for sale in another.

In Bulgaria, a tax stamp is required on bottled spirits with CN code 2208 and 15% vol or more: whisky, vodka, rakia, gin, rum and liqueurs. The producer applies it in the tax warehouse, or the importer arranges it (Article 64). Holding, transporting, offering or selling such bottles without a valid stamp is banned, and a company that does it faces a fine of twice the duty due, but at least about €511 (Article 123(2)).

How to check the customer's age online

Every EU country sets a minimum age for buying alcohol, and the rule applies to online sales as much as to a shop counter. The age is national and can differ between wine and beer on one side and spirits on the other, so use the strictest limit that applies in the countries you deliver to. In Bulgaria the limit is 18 for all alcohol, under Article 54 of the Health Act. National laws rarely describe how to verify age on a website, so your store should be able to show what reasonable steps it took.

The age check in CloudCart: 5 steps

1. A notice on the storefront. State in the top bar, in the category descriptions and in your terms that you sell alcohol only to adults of legal drinking age. The customer sees it before reaching the cart.
2. A required field at checkout. In the admin, open Customers → Custom fields and add a field of type Checkbox, with the storefront name "Age" and one value, for example "I confirm that I am 18 or older". Switch on Required and Active: the field appears at checkout, and the order cannot be completed without the tick.
3. A record on the customer. The answer is stored with the customer and can be used in filters and segments. If you leave "Allow customer to modify" off, the customer cannot change the answer later from their account.
4. A clause in your terms. Add that the contract is concluded only with adults and that the parcel is not handed to a minor.
5. A check at delivery. A tick on a website does not prove age. Ask your courier whether the driver can check ID on handover. With GLS in CloudCart you can switch on delivery after recipient verification or signature. If no check is available, state in your terms that the parcel is returned when there is doubt.

Can you advertise wine, beer and spirits?

Advertising alcohol is allowed in most EU countries with restrictions, and the restrictions are national. Typical rules forbid ads aimed at minors, ads linking alcohol with driving or sporting success, and claims that alcohol improves health or social life. Some countries go further. Bulgaria bans direct advertising of spirits with 15% alcohol or more (Article 55 of the Health Act) and allows wine and beer ads within those limits.

For a wine shop the safe direction is the same everywhere: advertise grape varieties, wineries, regions, food pairings and gift boxes, with audiences limited to adults. Check spirits campaigns with a lawyer, and check each ad platform's alcohol policy before you launch. Facebook Marketplace, for example, does not accept alcohol listings; see Facebook Marketplace for business.

Organic search has none of these limits. Shoppers search for a grape, a region, a vintage or a winery, and a category page with properties such as variety, region, vintage, sweetness and bottle size, used as filters, answers exactly those searches. In CloudCart, properties are created in Products → Properties, attached to the category and shown as filters on the storefront when "Use as filter" is on. More on catalogue structure is on the product catalogue page.

What must a wine product page show?

A wine product page shows the mandatory food information before the order, including the alcohol strength in % vol for any drink above 1.2%. This is the distance-selling rule of Article 14 of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, explained in detail in the guide to starting an online food store.

Wine has had its own extra labelling rules since 8 December 2023: the list of ingredients and the nutrition declaration can be given on the label or electronically, for example through a QR code. Allergens and the energy value stay on the physical label. The rules apply to wines from the 2024 harvest, and wines produced before 8 December 2023 can be sold until stocks run out (European Commission, new wine labelling rules).

The page for each wine contains:

• the name, grape variety or blend, region and vintage;
• the alcohol strength in % vol and the bottle size;
• the allergens, for wine usually sulphites;
• the energy value and a link to the e-label, if the producer uses one;
• the name and address of the producer or importer;
• a photo of the label on which the details can be read;
• the information in the language of each country where you sell.

How to ship wine and spirits by courier

Wine ships by parcel courier within your country once the duty is paid, but every courier sets its own conditions for alcohol and glass. Before the first parcel, check in your contract whether alcohol is accepted, where, in what packaging, and how breakage is covered. Postal services often have stricter rules for alcohol than couriers; in Bulgaria, for example, the excise act bans sending excise goods by post except duty-paid goods with the required stamps (Article 99a).

Good practice for glass bottles:

1. Packaging made for bottles. A box with pulp or cardboard inserts for every bottle, upright and unable to move. Standard boxes for 1, 3 and 6 bottles keep the shipping price predictable.
2. Insurance and declared value. For expensive wines, declare the value so a broken bottle is covered. In the GLS app in CloudCart, Insurance and Declared parcel value are switches in the settings.
3. Weight on the product. Enter the exact weight of the bottle with packaging, so the customer sees the real delivery price in the cart.
4. Delivery zones. Until you are registered for excise in other EU countries, deliver only to your own country. In Settings → Geo Zones, create a zone for that country and link it to your shipping methods.

The setup for each courier is in the guide to shipping and couriers.

Can you sell wine to customers in other EU countries?

Yes, but the excise duty is due in the buyer's country, and you arrange it there before shipping. Under Article 44 of Directive (EU) 2020/262, which applies from 13 February 2023, duty-paid alcohol bought at a distance by a consumer in another member state is taxed in the member state of destination. The seller is liable for the duty and, before dispatch, registers its identity and guarantees payment of the duty in that country. Some countries let the seller appoint a tax representative instead (European Commission, distance selling of excise goods).

1. Choose the countries. Each destination has its own registration, guarantee, rates and, for spirits, possibly tax stamps. Start with one or two.
2. Register in the destination country with its excise office, or appoint a tax representative where that is allowed, before the first parcel.
3. Lodge the guarantee for the duty in the form that country accepts.
4. Follow your own country's procedure. The country you ship from may have its own steps too. Bulgaria, for example, requires registration with its Customs Agency, a written notice before each shipment and proof that the duty is guaranteed or paid in the destination country.
5. Pay the duty after delivery in the destination country and keep records of every delivery by customer, product and quantity.

VAT is a separate question. Once your sales to consumers in other EU countries pass €10,000 a year in total, you charge the VAT of each customer's country, usually through the One Stop Shop (OSS). The steps are in the guide to OSS VAT for cross-border EU sales. OSS covers only VAT: excise duty is settled separately, as above.

A store per country makes this manageable. With the Multilang app in CloudCart, each country gets its own store linked to your main one, with its own language, currency, prices, couriers and payment methods, so the shop for Austria only offers the products and delivery zones you are registered for. See the multistore page and the guide to multilingual and multi-currency stores.

Important: procedures in the destination country differ a lot. Before the first parcel to a new country, ask its excise office what registration, guarantee and documents it requires.

Does the 14-day right of withdrawal apply to wine?

Yes, for an ordinary online purchase of wine the 14-day right of withdrawal applies in every EU country. Article 16(g) of the Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU excludes only alcoholic drinks whose price is agreed at the time of the order, whose delivery can take place only after 30 days, and whose value depends on market fluctuations the trader cannot control. That covers, for example, en primeur sales of wine from a future vintage. Refund deadlines and the withdrawal form are in the guide to returns and consumer rights for online stores.

How to start an online wine shop: 7 steps

1. Business and suppliers. A registered company or sole trader, and duty-paid stock from producers or importers.
2. Check your activity. Your own wine: excise registration of the winery. A shop or warehouse: any national or local retail licence.
3. The store. Categories by type, grape and region, with properties and filters.
4. Age check. A required checkbox at checkout and a clear notice on the storefront.
5. Tax registrations. VAT and any reporting your country requires before the first sale.
6. Delivery. A courier that accepts alcohol, packaging for bottles and a delivery zone for your country.
7. Sales and marketing. SEO on the category pages and wine ads for adults only. Other EU countries once you are registered for excise there.

Frequently asked questions

Questions about setting up your wine shop? Write to us at support@cloudcart.com. You can start today: Create a store for €1.