They can, but they have to ship to a local PLCB store, which will then either allow the customer to pick it up in the store, or ship it to them, charging the customer again for the shipping.

I doubt the PLCB is willing to foot the bill for the initial shipment, but it just complicates the entire process.

We (a retailer) have been shipping direct to PLCB stores for almost a decade now. It sounds like an insane system, but, since they have no other choice, PA residents go through this hassle (and pay the high PA taxes) to get their wines.

Bear in mind that the PLCB only allows you to direct purchase wines that it doesn't carry in any of its stores. If you live in Scranton, and the bottle of Chardonnay that you want is on the shelf in PIttsburgh, you'll have to go get it there!

@RBoulanger -- Best rule ever. The PLCB stores won't even ship between themselves? How is this regulated? Do they verify every order by hand?

Painful!

How did I miss this at the time? That philly.com article link is stale, but I think it probably had something to do with the PLCB protectionism of PA wineries (permitting out of state retailers, like the Wine Messenger, RBoulanger, but not out of state producers), because I do recall something about that having been struck down recently.

Also, incidentally, what would happen if you lived in Scranton and wanted that bottle in Pittsburgh isn't that you'd have to drive to Pittsburgh: the PLCB does do store to store transfers, at no cost to you, if you ask for it, but it often takes a long time, both through mismanagement and because there's nothing in it for the store manager on the sending side (in a sense, he loses the sale, although I don't think that the PLCB explicitly compensates on commission). I've friends who do this semi-regularly for some of the less commonly-stocked whiskeys, and they've tales of having to go into the back stockroom with the employee to help the latter locate their bottle.

Which leads me to... Mark: there isn't much framework about the inter-store shipping, probably because people request it so rarely. There's no record keeping system, one store just calls the other and they each update their inventory lists. Further, although the bottle is theoretically "held" for you, they often don't note that in any way at the receiving end, nor do they seem to keep a list of requests, so the employee from whom you go to pick the bottle up probably won't even know about it (but will happily go look around in the store room for you).