Want to Drink Rare Bourbons for a Good Price? Try Winning the Lottery
Bourbon’s popularity has made the spirit prone to immediate sellouts and inflated resale prices. That’s where state-run lotteries come in.
Sean Murawski developed a taste for good bourbon back when he was bartending his way through college. Since then, the Northern Virginia-based military officer has been building up his rare bottle collection the old-fashioned way: via overseas trips to places where bottles are more available, and through the occasional right-place-at-the-right-time moment when an allocated bourbon hits the shelves at his local liquor store.
“Bourbon is a social thing to me,” says Murawski. “Good bourbon is for drinking with good friends. I don’t drink very often, so when I drink, I want to drink something good. Generally, those rare or those allocated bourbons are associated with quality—so when I find a rare bottle, it’s normally an opportunity to get people over to just relax and try something good.”
Murawski often hosts Bourbon 101 classes for friends at his home and has built a sizable community of bourbon lovers. But his buying game changed dramatically when he happened to overhear some people at his favorite bar, The Hideaway, talking about their winnings from the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority’s (ABC) bourbon lottery, a state-run lottery system that gives a few lucky winners the chance to purchase a limited-release bourbon at a discounted price.
“Now I enter every Virginia lottery that’s got something I want,” Murawski says. He estimates that it ends up being around five lotteries per year.
During the three years he’s competed, he has only won once: In 2025, he beat out nearly 67,000 other entrants across the state of Virginia. He got an email notification, clicked a link to purchase, and two days later became the proud owner of a Van Winkle Special Reserve Lot B 12-year bourbon. He paid just $149.99 for it, a steal considering a new bottle today goes for $929 on the secondary market.
“The lottery gives me a chance to get something I wouldn’t normally get at a fair price,” he says. “In Virginia, if you win the lottery, you get it at retail price or slightly above the manufacturer’s suggested price. It gives the average person a chance to get a bottle.”
Virginia isn’t the only state offering a few lucky winners the chance to score rare labels, either. Of the 18 jurisdictions in the United States that operate under the control model —meaning they control the sale and distribution of distilled spirits—only ten have adopted a formal lottery system. Others host retailer lotteries, county-run sweepstakes, state raffles, or consumer bidding auctions to purchase limited-release state allocated bottles. Currently, the control systems letting their residents compete for a chance to purchase the rarest in their lot include Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland (Montgomery County), Virginia, Idaho, Utah, Oregon, Alabama, Maine, and New Hampshire.
“Lotteries exist to create a more equitable purchasing process,” explains Jamie Donley, product and program manager at the Idaho State Liquor Division. Without a lottery system, Donley notes, limited products could be unfairly purchased by the first people in line, who are often those with the most flexible schedules or are dedicated bourbon hunters. A lottery helps ensure equal opportunity and access to rare and highly sought-after products.
The ‘Chaos and Confusion’ of Bourbon Sales
Before the lotteries were created, anyone hoping to get their hands on a rare bourbon—like a W.L. Weller Special Reserve, E.H. Taylor Barrel Proof, Blanton’s, Pappy Van Winkle, or a limited release like Four Roses Limited Edition or even Freddie Noe’s Little Book annual release—in a control system could be found camping out the night before a liquor store delivery or trolling bourbon boards on online community platforms like Discord to figure out the allocated drop system. “Those guys were so good at predicting it that, generally within bottles hitting the shelf, the good ones would be gone in five minutes at the most,” Murawski says.
Many of these lottery systems were created to replace the chaos and confusion of those first-come, first-served models. The response from the bourbon community has been overwhelmingly positive. On the East Coast, the New Hampshire Liquor Commission reported they had 300 entrants for their first limited release raffle in 2012. By 2024, they had more than 28,000 consumers and licensees entering their spring and fall limited release raffles, awarding nearly 13,300 individuals the chance to purchase exclusive, hard-to-find spirits.
“We began allocating bottles simply because demand outgrew our supply,” says David Bock, master distiller for A. Smith Bowman Distillery, which recently held its own lottery for a limited-edition rye whiskey. “Most of our allocated bottles stem from our experimental lines, which are inherently small-batch and limited in quantity. Because of the incredibly small scale of our experimental releases, distributing across multiple states is a massive challenge. An alternative we’ve found that works well is to provide a state with bottles meant for a state-run lottery.”
Although these lotteries are popular among bourbon drinkers, the bottles chosen aren’t always bourbons. “They can include a variety of high-demand spirits,” including tequila, brandy or single malt Scotch whisky, explains Joseph Mollica, Chairman of the NH Liquor Commission. However, “bourbon does tend to dominate.”
Fighting Back Against Inflated Resale Prices
Bourbon’s popularity has made it prone to immediate sellouts and inflated resale prices on the secondary market, which is why many of these lotteries have strict rules for entrants. Participants must reside in the state where the lottery takes place and cannot re-sell any of their winnings. The average lottery bottles range from $39.99 to $7,499.99, which can tempt certain questionably moraled applicants who know that a secondhand sale could fetch triple or quadruple the price.
But for people simply looking to score bottles to share with friends and family, like Murawski, these lotteries give them the opportunity to own spirits they’ve only dreamed of opening.
“My dream lottery win is probably one of the Buffalo Trace Antique Collections called the Thomas H. Handy Sazerac Rye,” Murawski says. “I’ve never been able to buy one of those myself ever and I love it. I’ve had it a few times in restaurants, and I would love to buy a bottle of it. I’ll likely never win one, but it’s nice to have a chance.”