Washington State Stores

[Ed Hamilton]

I just ran across the following on the Washington State Liquor Control Board site

Occasionally, customers may desire to buy a product not listed by the Washington State Liquor Control Board. All Stores and Contract Liquor Stores personnel will be pleased to assist in preparing a special order, in a one case minimum quantity for the product. If the product can be purchased anywhere within the continental U.S. by the Board, it will be purchased and shipped to the local store or Contract Liquor Store for pickup (Allow 6-8 weeks). Note: Any of the items listed in the price list, not "discontinued" or "closed out" and identified with merchandise symbol "P" and not stocked in your local store or Contract Liquor Store may be ordered in one or more bottle orders with their next order.

Do you know of anyone who has tried to get a case of special order liquor? Does this actually work, or is it, well, another word from our sponsor?

[elicia]

i am new to Washington, and pretty darned new to drinking n mixing ~ but i need to stock my home Tiki Bar with rum(s).. if you give me a short list of "must haves" ~ i'll try out the special order feature that is offered!

[El Ron de Cuba]

Ed,

I'm not sure about Washington. FYI, Pennsylvania state store's website lists a similar option. I've never used it (I live in nearby WV), but they do carry most of the major "good" rums (Barbancourt, Matusalem, etc.) on special order, if not in the store. My birthday is coming up, so I'm going to take advantage by testing the selection at a state store somewhere in Pittsburgh as a birthday treat...I'll report back. Around me here, all you have is Bacardi, Appleton, Mount Gay, etc., and just the lower line ones from those brands, other than Bacardi 8.

Bruce

[Ed Hamilton]

There are a number of rums that I'd look for including Ron Zacapa Centenario,

Barbancourt 5 star or Reserve Special, Cruzan Estate Diamond, Flor de Cana 7 year old. It's hard to know what to suggest as you may or not favor the smoky flavor of El Dorado 15 year old or Flor De Cana White Rum.

If I lived in Washington, I'd look for a few friends to share a case of something I knew we all liked or were willing to try.

[MGLloyd]

I have lived in Washington pretty much my entire life, and have often special ordered single bottles from the liquor store. Possibly the most interesting thing I ever ordered was for a gag gift: a Dutch liquor called Advocaat. Without going into details, let me just say that it was full of eggy goodness.

[Ed Hamilton]

often special ordered single bottles from the liquor store.

That's interesting, I've been told and read that special orders must be for a whole case of anything that isn't inventoried in the Washington State warehouse.

[DrinkBoy]

It is important to remember that the Washington State Liquor Stores are a -GOVERNMENT- run system. And as such they almost never provide services above and beyond the call of duty... in fact they rarely even provide the services that they claim to be capable of :->

Many years back I wanted to get some Maraschino liqueur, and was very specifically told that it had to be a full case, or nothing at all, since this was not something that was being carried in the state. I ended up teaming up with a couple of other folks who split the order and was able to order a case in.

They do not do special orders on anything less then a full case. What they -do- is requisition products from other stores. So as long as some store in the state as a product you are wanting, they are able to order as little as a single bottle from that store to be sent back to the main warehouse, and then sent to the desired store for you. Advockatt, while not "common", is something I think has been "in state" for many years now, so chances are that this was just not something that was carried in this one store, and it was "special ordered" from another store.

I use the WSLCB database so much that I've even modified my system registry so that I can type in "WSLCB" followed by the thing I'm looking for, into the "Address" field of Internet Explorer, and it automatically jumps out to the database and does a search :-> As a matter of fact, this search capability is even something I helped the folks running the website set up onto their system. Originally it didn't provide a free-text search, but I messed around with figuring out how to post remote queries to their database and saw that the database was perfectly capable of responding to free-text strings, and then told the webmaster how to enable it :-> :->

-Robert

[Ed Hamilton]

Very cool Drinkboy, I'll have to experiment with free text searches on some other sites, including my own.

[MGLloyd]

Drinkboy is spot on regarding the special ordering of single bottles from the WSLCB. Many a time I have gone to the Mill Creek store and asked for a particular item. One of the staff looks it up on a computer and can (usually) tell me immediately if any of the stores or the main warehouse has it. If it is already somewhere in western Washington, I can get it in a few days. If it is over the mountains in Spokane or somewhere, it can take up to a week.

I have at times apparently ordered the very last bottle of something in the inventory system, and the bottle arrives covered in dust, and in one case, spiderwebs! I have never ordered a special item by the case insofar as I am usually looking for just one bottle for cooking or drinking purposes.

I did try once to order a bottle of Everclear to use to sterilize my homebrewing making fittings. It apparently has too high of an alcohol content to be legal in Washington; but the next time I was in Portland on business, I stopped at their state stores and they carry it. One bottle has lasted me about ten years now, and I have probably only used about two ounces.