Pennsylvania’s LCB Loves You and Wants You To Be Happy
My vitriol for Maryland’s wine shipping laws will find no sympathy up I-83, where Pennsylvania’s Liquor Control Board keeps wine drinkers on a short leash. Not only can you not have wine shipped to you, but you can’t even purchase from a private wine shop. The only place to pick up your Pegau is at state run stores.
The Pittsburgh Post-Post Gazette is in the midst of a four part series on the LCB. The articles are pretty good and informative read on a liquor control system that has benefits…
Peter Heim, a sommelier in the Harrisburg area, said he finds “the system is very, very helpful in a lot of ways,” primarily because of discounted prices.
but also plenty of drawbacks…
“You just can’t get things when you want them. I buy stuff here, but nobody who is a really serious collector can buy everything in Pennsylvania and be happy,” said Mr. Squires (of Squires Board fame -ed). “The reality is that if you live somewhere near New York, New Jersey or Delaware, you have many better choices.”
While most of the closed stores were considered poor performers, others that lose even more money, or are located close to other state stores, remain open. In some cases, these stores have connections to, or sit within the district of, influential state politicians. In others, the reason for their continued operation remains a mystery.
The bit about discounted prices is especially true. When valuing wines, I’ve worked on algorithms that exclude prices from Penn LCB stores because they are below market rates and would skew the results to the low side.
Links to the Post-Gazette’s series thus far:
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:52 am
Interesting stuff. I’ve never heard about the PLCB offering steep discounts, though (at least not from my wine director pals within PA).
There’s no love lost between me and the PLCB (see some of my recent posts on the subject, such as http://1winedude.blogspot.com/2008/01/wine-communism-us-states-non-compliance.html ), so I’m probably a (very) biased opinion
.
Cheers!
February 4th, 2008 at 6:34 am
Yeah, I’m sure nobody called called a “big fan” of the PLCB. Thanks for the comment!