Buying Wine on The Internet in Every State

[Jason]

Curmy, Curmy, Curmy.
Tenacious little bugger aren't you?
I don't know exactly how many, but to my knowledge, a lot of states tack on extra taxes on the on premise guys. Here in Florida, several people I know have been audited.
If these guys were to buy at retail there would be no paper trail for the state.
The distribs also regulate the license (by law) IE expired license, or someone with a beer and wine license buying Cognac. The state would lose control over all this if you could buy anywhere.
I know this sounds like the "man trying to keep us down" but we're sitting here on the wine side of things (where people do the right things and are generally good folks.)
The government is afraid to let any control of this go for fear of revenue loss and letting the liquor business go unchecked.
The wines guys like to laugh that if it wasn't for us, the liquor guys would still be driving around in cheap suits saying "Have I got a deal fuh you". These were the people, from not so long ago, that the rules were made for. Only relatively recently have we had a nice clean wine industry come along and make the laws look overly restrictive.
Remember, we are highly regulated because the government saw my industry as the cashflow for the "outfit" in years past.
Putting everything on a distribs invoice is another way to prevent tax fraud in an industry that was (until recently) cash dominated and ripe for picking from the bad guys. This all sounds ludicrous in today's environment, but only because the biz has been cleaned up and the laws have not been adjusted for it. We as wine people are seen as cohorts in that group.
Look at the elected officials, half these guys are dead, they just haven't gotten the memo that tells them that.
Dom thing - wow, I can't imagine purchasing enough cases to be $20 below wholesale and still make $. Sometimes on an order this large, these guys get a major chunk of free goods (of something else) and use that chunk to subsidise what would be the Dom in this case. Other people simply take the loss and make it up on traffic of other non wine items.
Silver Oak - I'm sure your local guys don't have any problem getting rid of the wine.
The practice of using a "cherry" as a wedge is a hot button right now for a lot of wineries. Even though the distrib buys the wine, the wineries are getting very "hands on" over where the wine goes and how much.
The prestige properties are very careful to not use there stuff as a hammer for other brands. The irony comes in when the topic of their less desirable (or second label) wines come up, then there are no rules. The folks at Silver Oak would not be happy with your scenario. The other side is why take care of someone who does little or no biz with you? Tough call sometimes.