.wine Domain: A Global Address for the Wine Trade
The .wine extension entered the root zone on 23 July 2015; its ICANN agreement is dated 18 June 2015 and the contracting party is Binky Moon, LLC, part of Identity Digital. Producers, importers, wine bars, tasting events and trade publications all take names here. On 14 August 2026 the zone held 26,617 registrations.
The public interest section of the agreement commits the operator to open registration, so eligibility cannot be limited by identity. The sibling string .vin carries an agreement signed on the same day and belongs to the same company today; the difference is language. Weigh the two together with bulk domain search.
This application sat at the centre of the geographical indication debate in ICANN's history. On 9 September 2013 ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee stated that it had completed its consideration of the .wine and .vin strings, that the applications should proceed through the normal process, and that the committee had reached no consensus on specific safeguards. The agreement in force today adds no separate protection list for wine region names. What applies is the contract's geographic name protection. The decision rule: if you plan to use a place name as your root, your right comes from your own trademark and origin documents, never from the extension.
.WINE Domain at a Glance
- Registry operator Binky Moon, LLC
- Root zone entry 23 July 2015
- Registry agreement 18 June 2015; same day as .vin
- Eligibility None; the agreement commits to open registration
- Zone size 26,617 registrations (14 August 2026)
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .wine domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.wine Domain Prices — No Surprise Fees
Registration, transfer and renewal fees are listed separately. The renewal price can differ from the first-year price, so you see both up front.
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New Registration
$8.99 /year -
Transfer
$59.79 /year -
Renewal
$64.39 /year -
Restore
$154.90 -
Late Renewal
$11.12
Included With Every .wine Domain
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Free DNS management
Change A, MX, TXT and CNAME records yourself from the panel — no waiting on anyone when you move a site or mailbox.
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Domain lock
While the lock is on, nobody can move your domain to another registrar without your approval.
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Domain forwarding
Point the domain at your existing site, a campaign page or a social profile — at no extra cost.
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Free WHOIS privacy
Your name, address and phone stay out of public WHOIS records, which cuts down spam and scam calls.
.wine Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .wine domain is put on Client Hold on its expiry date, so the site and e-mail stop that same day. You can still renew during the first 20 days, but from this point a late renewal fee is added on top of the renewal price. On day 20 the registration is deleted and until day 50 only a paid restore brings it back. Nothing at all can be done in the 5 days that follow, and on day 55 the name is open to anyone. There is exactly one way never to enter this chain: keep auto-renewal on.
Domain Is Available (Available)
A .wine address at this stage has not been taken yet, and it goes to whoever registers first. Check the name you have in mind — if it is free, it can be yours within minutes.
Domain Is Active (Active Period)
Once registration is complete, the domain is registered to you for the term you selected. You can renew at any point before it expires to keep it active, or switch on auto-renewal so you never have to watch the date.
Renewal Window (Client Hold)
On its expiry date your .wine domain is put on Client Hold: the site and e-mail go down that day, but the registration is still yours. A single renewal within these first 20 days brings everything back exactly as it was — nothing is lost. The only difference is that a $11.12 late renewal fee is now added to the renewal price; renewing before the expiry date avoids that fee entirely.
Redemption Period (Redemption / RGP)
On day 20 the registration is deleted and the 30-day redemption period that ICANN requires of every gTLD registry begins. The name is not released to anyone during this time; only you can take it back, by paying the restore fee, until day 50. That fee is far higher than a renewal — renewing on time is always the cheaper route.
Pending Delete (Pending Delete)
Once the redemption window closes too, the domain enters its final 5 days and there is no way back. Neither renewal nor restore works here; nobody — your registrar included — can return the name to you. The registry uses this window as the last hold before the name goes back into the pool.
Open to Anyone Again (Released)
On day 55 the name .wine returns to the pool and anyone can register it. Sought-after names are often gone within seconds, and there is no guaranteed way to get one back. Yet staying out of this timeline is entirely in your hands: leave auto-renewal on and the expiry date will never catch you off guard.
The timeline above is the schedule Atak Domain applies and publishes. The ICANN chart you will find elsewhere shows a renewal window of up to 45 days after expiry; ICANN's policy on expired registrations (section 2.2.1) lets registrars delete an expired domain at any time, provided they disclose their policy in advance. We apply that window as 20 days and publish it here in plain sight. Full text of the policy: ICANN Expired Registration Recovery Policy
.wine Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.wine Domain Registration
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .wine domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.wine Domain Support
- IDN Support Yes
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Frequently Asked Questions About .wine Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
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The difference is language: one says the product in English, the other in French.
Both agreements were signed on the same day, 18 June 2015, and both extensions belong to the same company today. The zones differ in size, with .wine the larger of the two. The decision rule: choose .wine for English-speaking markets and .vin where French is spoken or where origin is the message. Registering both is a common brand protection move; check the pair in one pass with bulk domain search.
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The agreement in force adds no separate protection list for wine region names.
What applies is the contract's geographic name protection, which covers country and region names but does not separately list wine geographical indications. The Governmental Advisory Committee stated in 2013 that no consensus existed on this point. The practical consequence: your right to use a place name comes from your own trademark and origin documents.
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Yes. The public interest section of the agreement commits the operator to open registration.
The clause forbids limiting eligibility by identity and forbids excluding legitimate users who are not associated with the most common use of the string. A tasting club, a food writer or a travel guide can all hold names here. There is no reason to postpone an application in anticipation of a restriction.
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No; the right to sell comes from the activity, never from the domain.
Selling and advertising alcohol is governed by the law of the country you operate in, and most jurisdictions add age verification, advertising limits and licensing on top. The extension changes none of that; it only decides what the address communicates. Settle the rules of your target market before you publish.
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Because IANA publishes no classic WHOIS server for this extension, only an RDAP endpoint.
Querying the canonical host on port 43 returns the message that the TLD is not supported. That is not a fault but the result of the operator's move to RDAP. Read registration data from your registrar's panel or an RDAP-capable client; our whois search tool still answers for extensions that kept the older service.
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