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Bloggit's Journal - Liquor - Washington Stores and Baggaged Bottles

About Liquor - Washington Stores and Baggaged Bottles

Previous Entry Liquor - Washington Stores and Baggaged Bottles Jan. 19th, 2008 @ 03:14 pm Next Entry
I like good liquor. If you've followed my posts, some of the most rambling have been after a particularly successful night of drinking. So it probably comes as little surprise that I care about the selection of liquor at the local stores.

Unfortunately, I live in Washington State. Actually, for most purposes, that's fortunate. Sure, the politics are particularly loopy and ineffective, something common to the West Coast and the New England area; both areas are so far to the left that they aren't even in-play for Presidential elections. Some bizarre regulations, lots of taxation and rather crappy schools because we aren't allowed to fix them. But other than that, it's pretty much all good.

Another effect of the massive regulation is a state-run liquor store system. Stores are limited in size, prices are set by the state, taxes are incredibly high, and most important to me, only a few items can be had. Liquor store managers can choose what they want to carry from a very limited list, and I am told by several such manager that they also must sell an entire case in a given amount of time or they aren't allowed to stock that item anymore.

I don't mind the hyper-taxation so much. At least Washington State doesn't have an income tax. But the inability to get a decent selection of libations is rather annoying. I can't see any good reason for it' it's not as if there's a problem with people getting drunk off of $120 bottles of aged Tequila or $40 bottles of Illy Espresso liqueur.

In theory, there's a bright side. The state stores have their inventory online. To quote, "For a complete price listing of the products sold by WSLCB". Complete with which stores have what and how much.

We'll come back to that.

So I was in Texas last week. The first liquor store I saw was, and I'm not kidding, a drive-through. Specifically Legacy Liquor Drive-Thru in Frisco... oddly, several miles from Legacy Blvd. This tiny store had a better selection than most Washington stores, but when I asked where to go for a better selection, they pointed me down the street. To Goodies(?).

Goodies is huge. And has, by Washington standards, very low prices. So I bought several bottles of, well, goodies. And packed them, carefully padded, in my hard-side suitcase, for my flight back.

The airline in question has generally been fine by me; a few screwy policies, but mostly fine. I'm less crazy about the TSA (security), especially since we're not allowed to lock suitcases. I have no idea who to blame for this, but somehow the two center bottles, and only those two got shattered. Completely. There's not much chance they bounced into each-other, and they were padded from the edges, so my best guess is a hammer when the case was opened. Either way, so much for gentle handling of baggage. The results were a very sticky suitcase.

So I logged onto the Washington liquor site to check for some of these neat liqueurs. Most simply cannot be had here. Some are only in a few stores, and oddly, no single store had more than two of the nine or so I was interested in, even though about five were available in-state. But, since I was out-and-about anyhow, I stopped in a store to get one of them.

... and found a variety not mentioned on the Washington State website. I bought a handful (and made notes on the rest) and checked online after; sure 'nuff, the Washington State Liquor Site is incomplete. I got some interesting stuff that I couldn't find in Texas... but also wouldn't be able to find using the comprehensive list in Washington.

So not only do we have strange limitations on what can be carried, but we can't even find out about some of the edge-condition stuff that may make a sudden special appearance. Very annoying.
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