Utah’s Liquor Laws, or, SLC Punk hit it right on the mark

The liquor laws in Utah are a labyrinth that would make even David Bowie tinkle a little.

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Every person I talk to sheds a little bit more light on the issue, but nobody has a concise explanation.  Probably because there isn't one.  Here's what I think I understand so far:

"Where'd you get the beer?"

"Wyoming, where else?"

"This actually needs some explanation.  Beer in supermarkets in Utah is weak.  Three points instead of the normal six points of alcohol.  It's the religious influence, and it's a pain in the ass.  To me, it makes no sense.  If you've got alcohol, you've got alcohol.  So why three instead of six?  You know a drunk's just gonna drink twice as many beers to get drunk.  So not only do you have a drunk on your hands... but you have a drunk who's fat and gross.  There's nothing worse."

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3.2 Beer.  I really shouldn’t complain, though.  It’s perfect for me.  I basically catch a whiff of someone else’s drink and get a contact drunk, so if they wanna water down my happy juice, that’s probably better for everyone concerned.

Unlike Idaho, and I’m sure many other places, you can’t buy wine in grocery stores in Utah.  Just beer, and, depending on the store, usually a pretty limited and crappy selection.  Although, the grocery store closest to us, which I will no longer patronize because it is overpriced, doesn’t stock a lot of things I like, and the produce guy is overly-helpful in a way that totally creeped me out (close talking, shoving sliced mini-cucumbers on toothpicks in my face…) introduced us to a hilarious and quite palatable libation in the form of Polygamy Porter.

Is it just me or does the woman on the left really look like Joyce DeWitt?

But speaking of wine, it’s expensive here!  At least, compared to the wine we used to buy at Winco in Idaho, it feels like highway robbery.  We used to be all about Rex Goliath wine, which we lovingly call chicken wine, although cock wine would both more and less appropriate, given that the label bears an image of its giant rooster namesake.  At Winco, it was $4.99 for a standard size bottle, and $8 or $9 for the 1.5 liter bottle.  It’s not something you’d put in your wine cellar and age for a special occasion, but it’s decent enough that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to serve it to guests, and it doesn’t give me an instant hangover like Franzia.  So I thought I had graduated to the level of adulthood where you don’t have to buy jugs of Carlo Rossi, but I guess I’m not quite there yet.

Sidenote:  I know I used to hate on Winco for being the po’ people store in Idaho.  The one in Moscow was a little grungy and usually pretty crowded, as much as any place in Idaho can ever be crowded.  However, after moving back to New Jersey and having no access to such a place, I found I really resented having to buy prepackaged dry goods like flour and spices and pasta.  The best part about bulk bins is obviously the ridiculously low price, so I won’t even pretend that’s not my primary motivation in going to Winco, but sometimes it’s also really nice to be able to precisely control the amount of a substance that you choose to buy.  This one time, I needed a tiny amount of cardamom for a recipe I wanted to try, but I wasn’t about to pay more than an hour’s wage for a tiny jar of spice that I would probably use once and have to throw out the next time I moved.  Enter Winco.  $.43 later, I had just enough cardamom for whatever random concoction I was trying to whip up.  What’s not to love? 

Needless to say, when I discovered that there are two Winco stores within 30 minutes of ournew home, I was totally stoked.  Now I’m one of those people who make a pilgrimage once every so often in order to hoard these wonderfully inexpensive foodstuffs.  I bring a cooler and stock up on frozen berries, frozen corn…I shovel those dried apple rings into a plastic bag until it’s about to burst.  It’s just…so beautiful.

Winco, I just don’t know how to quit you.

But I digress.  Did you know that Happy Hours and other forms of drink specials are not allowed in Utah?  This is a recent development, as of June, I think.  Any alcoholic beverage sold, from beer to wine to mixed drinks, has to be the same price whenever it is sold.  That being said, a lot of joints are getting around this limitation with a clever loophole.  Changing the size of a drink and selling that different size only once a week for a low price gets a green flag.  So you can’t sell pints of a certain draft beer for $4 from Wednesday through Monday and then sell it for $1.50 on Tuesday.  But you can sell pints for $4 all the time and sell a 14 oz. glass of the same beer for $1.50 on Tuesday.  Or, you can sell pints for $3.50 and 24 oz. mugs for only $3.75, as long as that particular drink is always that price when it is sold at that size.  So, so weird.

Worse still, only true bars can sell you a drink without forcing you to also buy food.  Restaurants with less comprehensive liquor licenses cannot sell you a drink unless you buy food.  The worst.  We found this out the hard way after a morning of vigorous hiking through a mosquito-infested canyon that did not live up to its name (Dry Canyon).  We devoured sandwiches about 20 minutes before we got back to the trailhead, so we weren’t hungry, we just really needed beers.  Much to our dismay, we ordered beers and were immediately forced to choose something, anything edible, before we were allowed to have our beers. 

Okay, thanks, but I just ate.  Now all I want to do is sit here in your air conditioning and drink this beer that I already bought from you.  Fortunately, we found a nice hummus plate on the menu so it wasn’t the worst thing ever, but still.  Who are you to decide whether or not my stomach is properly primed to receive alcohol?  What if I just carbo-loaded on the way over here, and one more ounce of food will cause me to simply explode, ala Monty Python’s Meaning of Life?  What THEN, Utah Liquor Control Board and restaurant owner?  WHAT.