Online liquor retailers that have large selections & ship to Illinois?

January 28, 2021 7:24 PM

I'm in Chicago and am in search of a particular brandy. Area liquor retailers don't carry it, so I'm looking into online sellers. But apparently there are restrictions on selling/shipping alcohol to individual buyers in Illinois (among other states). So I need some tips on online sellers who might carry hard-to-find liquors and that will ship to me in Illinois, please!

Online retailers I have tried so far:
astorwines.com - They carry the brandy, but can't ship to Illlinois
internetwines.com - They can ship to Illinois (signature upon delivery required, which is fine with me) and supposedly carried the brandy - until it turned out that they were out of stock :(

posted by Mechitar to Food & Drink (8 answers total)

Did you try Binny's? They always come up when I'm looking for stuff and they've got locations all over Illinois.
posted by fedward at 7:37 PM on January 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Fedward, yes, I tried Binny's. Their selection is amazing, but they let me down with this one (though they did stock it until recently).
posted by Mechitar at 7:40 PM on January 28, 2021

Do you have a good local shop? Our neighborhood package store will buy stuff for us and sell it to us at normal cost.
posted by disconnect at 8:12 PM on January 28, 2021

I recently ordered some hard to find whisky from west DuPont circle. It shipped via fedex.
posted by whisk(e)y neat at 10:32 PM on January 28, 2021

What specifically are you looking for? That might help with recommendations for places that can ship to Illinois or might be willing to order it for you.
posted by erst at 12:21 AM on January 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Considering the limited availability you're encountering, my questions are: are you sure it's still produced? Even if it's still being produced, is the annual production already sold out and thus everybody's just waiting for the next year's batch to come in? If I were you I'd first try to ascertain whether the brandy you're looking for is actually available for distribution or if the distributors are all sold out for the year. If you can figure out if distributors have it, then you can find liquor stores in your area who work with those distributors and have them special order it for you. (Strategy not valid in Virginia, Pennsylvania, or other places where liquor stores are state run). If the distributors don't have it, then you'll just have to call or visit every liquor store you can find and see if somebody just happens to have a bottle (like people used to do for Pappy Van Winkle before the demand got so great that the entire production run will sell as soon as it's released).
posted by fedward at 6:56 AM on January 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

Did you try Drizly? It's generally for booze delivery but it delivers from lots of smaller non-chain stores; maybe one of those shops has a bottle on their shelf?
posted by sencha at 2:43 PM on January 29, 2021

Did you ask Binny's to order it for you? They did a special order of a thing they didn't stock for my brother in law. Worth a call to ask.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:26 AM on January 30, 2021