New Yorkers can look forward to wider availability of wines, especially rarer and low-volume vintages, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday that overturned laws prohibiting consumers from buying wine directly from wineries, according to retailers and winery owners.

“It’s a win for the customer,” the president of the New York City wine retailer Sherry-Lehmann on Madison Avenue, Michael Yurch, said.

Under the old law, if New Yorkers discovered an exceptional merlot at a small winery in Napa Valley that they wanted to share with their friends in the city, they would have two options: smuggle some back illegally or find a distributor that sells the wine in New York. But many vineyards, especially boutique wineries that produce in lower volumes, don’t have out-of-state distributors.

Yesterday’s ruling could change all that by allowing customers to buy directly from the wineries, bypassing the traditional three-tier system of wine producer to distributor, distributor to retailer, retailer to customer.

“I think it’s wonderful,” a director of Tasters Guild New York, Vivian Tramontana, said. The organization is devoted to educating New Yorkers about wine and food. Under the old law, members of the group could taste wines unavailable in New York at guild events – but couldn’t buy them.

“We educate people in wines from everywhere – so if we educate them and they can’t get them, it’s very frustrating,” Ms. Tramontana said.

In the long run, wine prices throughout the city may go down, the owner of PJ’s Wine on Broadway, Peter Yi, said.

With more customers buying their wine directly from wineries, retail businesses will have to become more competitive, he said.

“I don’t think people are slashing their prices today,” Mr. Yi said. “But we’re certainly looking to lowering our prices, sharpening our pencil a little bit more.”

Fine wines produced in lower quantities will be the hardest hit in retailers’ sales, because of their increased availability, he said.

Despite the wine market’s potential for dramatic change, Mr. Yurch said his business is well-prepared.

“We are not afraid of open markets,” the executive said. “We here at Sherry-Lehmann have been champions of free trade from the get-go.”

The change won’t destroy the threetier system because the system is the most efficient, he said.

The owner of a New York winery said he doesn’t know what to make of the ruling, other than that it looks positive and may open up a drastically larger market for his wine.

Less than half an hour after the owner of Pellegrini Vineyards in Long Island, Robert Pellegrini, read a press release announcing the Supreme Court’s decision, he received an order for wine from Savannah, he said.

“I don’t know what to do with this order,” Mr. Pellegrini said. He will wait to decide after seeing how New York Legislature reacts to the ruling, he said.

Wine from Pellegrini Vineyards is sold in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, but as a result of the ruling, it could be sold in all 50 states.

Mr. Pellegrini said he is wary of becoming excited prematurely. It is still possible, if unlikely, that instead of opening up interstate commerce for wine, the state may instead ban intrastate shipping, he said, citing the ruling’s wording that states must place intrastate and interstate shipping on an equal footing.