“U.S. sales of alcoholic beverages were up 55 percent in the week ending March 21, according to Nielsen. Spirits sales were up 75 percent in the same period, wine sales were up 66 percent, beer sales up 42 percent,” reports Cyril Penn on WineBusiness.com. “What’s more, Nielsen said online sales of beer wine and spirits were up 243 percent versus the same week the year before.”
In Virginia, libraries, schools/universities, courts, and the DMV are all closed indefinitely. However, the states’ Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) stores are considered essential along with grocery stores, pharmacies, laundries and dry cleaners, gas stations, etc. I guess the state has to make money somehow.
Virginia, a former blue law state, has loosened the requirements on who can offer take-out liquor–breweries can now offer deliveries, many wineries are offering free shipping, and restaurants can sell their bottles of wine to go at discounted prices.
One the other hand, many distilleries have switched from making spirits to hand sanitizers.
Is your wine cellar or beer stash still intact? What is your favorite tipple during the pandemic
For a lot of shut-in”s, when the ban is lifted there will a decision as to whether they attend Weight Watches meeting or an AA meeting first
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That is hilarious Don. Right now I’m watching my weight and it keeps glaring back at me. I think an impasse has reached with neither of us losing or gaining ground.
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I’m impressed. You have a wine cellar? I knew you were a connoisseur, but you have a cellar? Wow.
I am a (very) occasional wine drinker, and I only really enjoy a good dark beer when it’s warm outside, so I am no sort of connoisseur of either. That leaves me with fewer ways to spend these virus holidays but, on the bright side, also one fewer drain on my retirement nest egg. And no wine cellar.
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Rolig,. No wine cellar just some half filled cases with wine from some wineries we visited in the good ole days. We don’t have a cellar. I’ve heard the tales that beer on a hot day or German beer is good. If there is such a thing as good beer, I haven’t met it yet.
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Had to look up ‘blue law states’. Now I understand. Jersey (C.I.) has only mostly relaxed its rather odd Sunday laws in recent years, a hangover from Methodist days.
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Blue Law states were states that had strong laws about what and where people could drink. Its a by-product of the American south being part of the bible belt. Most states have loosened up quite a bit. When I went to college in Virginia back in the 70s, the city my college was in was a dry city so we had to go to the next county to purchase alcoho. There was a lady from the Salvation Army there every Saturday with her tambourine–guess it was to collect money from the guilty people going in to purchase alcohol from the ABC stores. Now those same stores sell alcohol on Sundays. Thanks for commenting and telling us about the Methodists. I think our laws were a combination of Baptists, Methodists, and what today would be called Evangelicals.
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