When the leaves are falling here in the east, we remember our former life on the warmer West Coast in California. We used to make the short drive from Santa Barbara through the San Marcos Pass and into the ridiculously bucolic Santa Ynez Valley to taste wines at the old clapboard wineries next to the horse farms. On the way back to town, we might have even stopped by Solvang — the faux Danish town nestled in the hills — to munch on aebleskivers, Flintstones-sized jelly-smeared doughnut holes that are as close as the local wine country gets to hangover food.

Now that we call Washington, D.C., home, we can no longer feel superior to Jack and Miles-style hedonistic tourists when we venture to the Santa Ynez Valley. And, when we do find the opportunity to return, we discover that we now buy far more wine than we did when we lived just over the mountains. Because these low-production goodies — Melville‘s balanced pinot noirs from the Santa Rita Hills and their anti-chardonnay stainless steel chardonnay, Andrew Murray‘s huge single-vineyard syrahs, the deliciously obscure Rhône offerings from Curtis, and Blackjack Ranch‘s stunning blend of Bordeaux varietals aptly called “Harmonie” — rarely make it to our coast, we have no choice but to stock up.

In the old days, we could toss our haul into the trunk and drive it home. These days, we need to figure out how best to transport a case of wine across the country from California. When you consider both the weight of a case and the tangled web of state wine shipment laws, it’s no small feat. But we’ve worked it out and present you with our handy-dandy guide to getting your alcohol-laden bounty to your doorstep when you’re traveling within the United States.