Which state you live in greatly affects the cost (and thus, the quality) of wine you can buy. The Tax Foundation recently released an illuminating map of excise tax rates for wine in America.
Wine Taxes by US State
How high are wine taxes in your state.
Highlights
The most wine-friendly states are: Louisiana, California, Texas, Wisconsin, New York and Kansas
The least wine-friendly states are: Kentucky, Alaska, Florida, Iowa and New Mexico
If you live in a grayed-out state this means the state government completely controls all wine sales.
Wine taxes suck, but not as hard as they suck in the UK
Wine taxes for a bottle priced from about $7–$10
If you look closer at the statistics, you’ll realize that the US taxes wine by the gallon, which is about 5x larger than a standard bottle of wine. So, after doing some simple math we can see that even the worst offender, Kentucky, doesn’t even compare to how the U.K. excoriates wine drinkers. As if getting into wine wasn’t hard enough as is!
Conclusion
Don’t pick up and move, just know that if you live in a high tax state, a dollar of your purchase will go to Uncle Sam.
Uncle Sam really likes wine.