I seldom buy a case of wine without first tasting a bottle. A case of wine is a big commitment, monetarily and space wise. Besides it would suck to be stuck with eleven bottles of wine I didn't appreciate. However we do purchase a lot of wine on line, some of it from flash wine sites as well as traditional online wine retailers. There are so many wines I have acquired a taste for that are just not available at retail stores where we live. Consequently I am a subscriber to several flash wine sites. It takes a bit of getting used to the daily emails urging you to "Act Now!", on this incredible deal or lose out. The sales psychology of scarcity and hyperbolic wine descriptions are the norm in this arena. Oh and if your boss frowns on wine deliveries to your office you'll have to figure out other ways around the an adult signature is required BS.  If you're unsure about a wine you're considering purchasing, remember the internet is your friend. Searching for reviews and checking wine-searcher.com or 1000corks.com to verify pricing will go a long way toward helping you make sound decisions.  As much as I like going to the wine shops in person, browsing the store and having chats with the wine guys, I must admit shopping online is a huge time saver. I do most of my online buying from October to May. To avoid the chance of the wine being cooked to death by heat, don't have your wines shipped during the summer. Buying wine online can be a hit and miss proposition. Your best chances  for success are dealing with a trustworthy retailer and knowing the producers or importers. Here's how flash wine sites work. Wineries are juice factories and sometimes the juice is not selling fast enough. Storage is costly and if the wineries' banker is calling wondering where their money is, flash wine sites can be a quicker way to raise cash. Perhaps the harvest is around the corner and the vintner needs the space for the incoming crop. Wine that's held in tank or in unlabelled bottles offers the producer more flexibility. If the wine is still in tank, once a price is agreed upon the winery can bulk it out to another bottler, or bottle it for a flash seller at a discount. This is the business model that of Costco fame discounter Cameron Hughes used for years. Once the U.S. economy improved and the excess juice dried up, the company struggled with solvency. Cameron Hughes was recently purchased out of bankruptcy by Santa Rosa based Vintage Wine Estates. If the wine are in unlabeled bottles the winery can put a different label on it, as opposed to using their primary brand label. Same wine different label is a fairly common practice in the wine business. For example, in the U. S. the term 'private reserve' on a wine label may signify a wine of distinction, from a special vineyard or barrel lot, but in reality, and legally, two wines from the same vat can have different labels.  When there's lots of extra juice around there are bargains galore. Everybody loves a bargain and flash sites move wine quickly. Depending on how aggressive the discounts are, sometimes in just hours. If the wines are already bottled and labeled it becomes a little more problematic for the winery. Putting a wine in the market place at a discount in places where it is already being marketed at full retail could violate an agreement you have with a distributor and also erode your products perceived value to the consumer. Several months ago I received an offer from Last Bottle, a Napa Valley based flash wine vendor offering a 2015 Côtes du Rhone for about a ten spot, with free shipping if you purchased eight or more bottles. Last Bottle usually sources predominately California wines. It's fascinating to me how many unheard of $100 California Cabernets are available at a 50% discount.  Being a sucker for CDR and having tasted so many wonderful Rhone wines from the 2015 vintage already, I decided to pull the trigger and order a case. Last Bottle's fulfillm