Internet shopping is simple, cheap and effective. So why don't more people avail of it? Perhaps it's the scare factor, the one where you're told that once your credit card number is on the net that somehow it'll become available to a legion of hackers who'll spend your money like drunken sailors on shore leave. While it's true that no system of defenses is proof against a determined hack, the net currently provides security at least as good as the average shop, and probably more than using your credit card number over the telephone. Most e-commerce traders use securewebserver.com, which is a service that provides encrypted transactions over the net and allows almost perfect security.

Most people have heard of amazon.com for buying books and lastminute.com for cheap air tickets, but now, if you like wines, you can visit a number of sites. Although the net is global, there's little point exploring sites in France, Spain or Italy unless you have a means of transporting the wines from there. The simple answer is to look at Irish sites that have a door to door distribution system within Ireland. A search in the Doras directory will turn up sixteen sites dedicated to wine.

There's the site set up by two young men from Cork called bubblebrothers.com, which not surprisingly specialises in Champagne. They have a full range of champagnes from Reims and Epernay, a lot of small producers making single vineyard wines, and most importantly, reasonable prices. There's wine-ireland specialising in Spanish wines; the new Karwig wines with an extensive catalogue; Youen Jacob which specialises in fine wines; the well-designed Oddbins site which really makes searching and ordering easy; Ecock wines has recipes and an on-line wine school as well as its catalogue; you can learn about grape varieties and inform yourself on all aspects of wine at the Gilbeys Grapevine; Mitchells will give you details of their wine club and a course on wine. Another major player, Chateau Online will soon be up and running in Ireland.

You might ask how this differs from ordering wines by the more usual system of mail-order through a wine club. In a way it's not much different, you order from home and it arrives on your doorstep. But where on-line shopping differs from maill-order is that you can visit, without moving, a lot of different sites and browse until you find exactly w hat you're looking for. Price comparisons are easy to make and finding the best bargains is simply a matter of trawling through the sites - far easier than going to bunch of actual off-licenses one after the other. So if you go ahead and decide to buy wines on-line what happens? You pick your wines at your selected site, you fill out your order form, if you're paying by credit card you'll be referred to securewebserver.com, you enter your details and submit the form. Then all you have to do is sit back and wait for the wines to arrive. Most sites promise you delivery within five days, which is fast enough, although some sites offer a faster delivery service. If you live far away from a good off-license, getting wines delivered to your home is a big help. There can be hiccups: some years ago I set up The Irish Times wine club and that too was a mail-order business. What we found then was that distribution was the hard bit. Breakages, although not common, were not unknown. And that's a problem that's likely to be still with us - moving liquids around the country that are stored in glass containers is bound to have inbuilt problems. However it's not really a problem for the buyer, in all cases any breakages will either be replaced with new bottles or credit will be given.

Wine buying over the net isn't likely to transform our habits overnight, nor will it ever replace the more common dropping into an off-license on the way home or picking up a bottle or two at the supermarket. But it wil grow in its own niche market where specialised wines are sought or where a few cases are needed for a party or where the buyer doesn't have easy access to traditional outlets. One thing's for sure; on-line buying is here to stay.