Whodda thunk that Napa Valley would be early adopters? According to Terry Hall, head flak at the Napa Valley Vintners, online uber-store Amazon.com will start selling Napa wines as well as those from an additional 25 states as early as the end of September (thus spake the Wall Street Journal).

I’m all for mixing a little silicon in local terroir, but assumed perennial Napa County rival Sonoma County would have leapt first (two or our major growth sectors are wine and tech). Of course, shipping wines out-of-state is still fraught with niggling legal and protocol issues (as anyone who has worked in fulfillment can tell you), which makes it a perfect job for digital deployment. Online imbibers can thank Napa-based New Vine Logistics for handholding Amazon through this process, who, beyond having a company name straight from a sci-fi film, has brought us one step closer to a computer-generated voice querying ?Shall we drink some wine??