Really, Oregon?!

Tell me about it, I can’t stand the OLCC and the bureaucratic red tape behind this. But not ordering Oregon wine because of this doesn’t make sense either.

In Louisiana, no hard liquor can be ordered via the Internet. I don’t know if it’s part of the 3-tier system or what.

Also, I can get wines from California wineries shipped here (usually) without problems, but I cannot order a Texas wine to be shipped via the winery. Riddle me that.

I can make a quick run into All-Star liquors in Smith River, CA if y’all need goods.

I’m pretty sure no one can ship spirits. I’ve talked to multiple stores in different states that can ship wine but they can’t ship spirits. I just tried to ship from a store within Florida and they said no can do. Pretty sure this is not an Oregon thing.

+1

When I lived in WA and MN, no one would do it either.

Okay, that was a little white lie, there were a couple shops that would. But only a couple.

Yeah I think it may have to do with dry counties , I’m not altogether certain though …if you ship liquor across the country and say your parcel stops in a dry county and the clerk accidentally breaks it , I think that’s why they don’t do it. At any rate Texas is the pits , you can’t buy wine from an out of state retailer and have it shipped to you. So , living in Texas forces you to make do with what the wholesale companies THINK you want. I’m ITB here and that system is so crooked it boggles the mind. If you look at the largest campaign contributors to politicians throughout the state , it is the 2 major wholesale wine and liquor companies(accounting for probably 80% of the liquor and wine brands available here)…no doubt to keep the status quo. I remember a few years back there was a 6 month window where it was legal to buy wine from an out of state retailer and have it shipped here…I went NUTS at K&L , and Rare Wine company and a few other

When you say “won’t ship spirits” do you mean won’t ship across state lines or won’t even ship within state?

Yeah I think it’s across state lines , but really I’m not sure

21st Amendment gave states the control here. It’s a state-by-state regulation. D and M sells wine and spirits. If you want to figure out where a California outfit can ship spirits to, go to their site ( http://dandm.com/ ), put something in your cart and then look at the state pulldown on estimate shipping and tax to see what states they’ll ship only wine too, and which states they’ll ship liquor to.

Probably the hard way to get this information, but it was the first that came to mind…
fred

Eagle Rare is easy to find here. But yeah… our OLCC needs an overhaul.

Hyland Hills liquor in Beaverton is a good place to start.

Are we mad because we can’t buy liquor at a grocery store? If you remove the stuff used for well drinks, most everything is regularly available at comparable if not better prices. Most allocated items go to restaurants, but similar to wine if you give your business to a store they repay you usually.

All right, I can see that someone needs to defend the OLCC (Oregon Liquor Control Commission).

First of all, the OLCC is in the spirits business (we have state controlled liquor stores, and the OLCC is the distributor), so naturally they’re going to disallow any importation of hard alcohol. The State makes several hundred million a year off the sale of spirits. They don’t want to hurt that cash flow. The good news is that you can get any liquor imported into the state anywhere in the state. You just have to ask. This means that spirits that usually wouldn’t be available outside Portland are available everywhere. Second, the OLCC has been easy for breweries and wineries to work with. While a few of their rules are rather arcane, they will generally listen to you and try to figure out how to solve your problem. Their reporting requirements are a fraction of what’s required in the other West Coast states, and the excise taxes on beer and wine are low (small wineries pay no excise taxes). This helps the little guys that we on this Board all love.

Bitch all you want, but I’ll take the OLCC over the California ABC any day (and that doesn’t even factor in all the CalRecycling BS).

Rick… Michael A. may beg to differ on the ease of getting anything new imported to Oregon and into stores. He had a long diatribe on Facebook on his struggles to do just that.

You’re one of the few I’ve talked to that likes the OLCC’s CoD policy. Most hate it and feel it makes it harder to get their wine into stores and restaurants.

How does OLCC in your experience compare with the new regime in Washington State?

IIRC, the Supreme Court said states cannot favor their own producers. Oregon does not discriminate. No producer can mail order.
I like the OLCC. As described above, we have fabulous selections of obscure brands at every store. When Washington privatized their liquor sales, Target and Safeway and Costco drove out the small stores. Now all you can buy are the big brands in big bottles at big boxes. It is a disaster for those of us who like small odd weird distilleries.
Long live the OLCC! Please don’t take it away! If you do, I might have to start drinking wine again!!!
Phil Jones
Portland, OR

I do not drink many spirits, but some body does if you note the proliferation of distilleries in town that out number the Starbucks.

I think you’d find that the effect of big stores is extremely short lived if it changed. Here in MO you can buy any type of alcohol anywhere basically. Grocery, Target, Walgreens, Liquor stores, food stores, specialty stores, etc. Beer laws can be a bit more archaic due to the influence of AB in local politics as well as some other players who influenced tap and distribution policies, and distillation laws can be a bit difficult as well, but that is really another topic. In any case, we have all types of wine and liquor stores here as well, and it seems that the availability in grocery stores doesn’t really hurt retailers. When I lived in KS they had nothing above 3.2 in grocery stores. The big difference I noted was a proliferation of really terrible liquor stores that basically only sold major brand beer and maybe two stand up racks of major brand wine and spirits. In other words, when you liberalize the laws there remains a market for the better stores, it’s the really bottom rung stores that tend to fall away. At least, that’s my experience from neighboring states with quite different laws.

Washington resident here. This is completely false. The diversity of distilleries available at various small liquor stores and independent grocery stores has exploded compared to what we had with state run liquor stores.

I think he was being a wise guy!

Good job Phillip! Had me for a minute too until I read your post the second time.

Whoa, hook, line, and sinker!