Ohio has wine and beer in grocery stores, but not liquor. I'm pretty sure liquor stores have them all, BUT -- and this is key -- we go to Northern Kentucky to buy alcohol because it's cheaper there.

t edit By "we," I mean cheap-asses like me who live in southwestern Ohio. I assume someone wouldn't drive from Cleveland to Northern Kentucky just for some cheap bourbon.

Wait beer but not wine? So weird. I've lived in/been to places where liquor was at separate stores but beer and wine were available, or where it was all in separate stores or all in all stores...but usually beer and wine were treated the same. Weird!

They changed from beer only to beer-and-wine in TN while I was there. It was big. Still needed a special store for liquor. Minnesota is nothing-in-the-grocery.

In Brazil, everything is in the grocery store. It's nice.

There must be, like, historical reasons for all these little quirks, huh? That would be interesting to trace.

I was pretty irritated when Safeway wouldn't let me buy wine at 5am because the liquor closing hours were 2am - 8 am or something. And the "blue laws" in Baton Rouge when I was a kid were pretty baroque but definitely included alcohol - the aisles would get roped off on Sundays

NYC used to have laws against serving alcohol in restaurants before noon, which was kind of a bummer if you went to brunch at 11 and wanted a mimosa. Not sure if that law actually changed or is just no longer enforced.

Rhody has no alcoholic beverages of any kind in supermarkets. Very annoying.

In NC we can buy beer and wine in grocery stores (although there are specialty stores for the fancy stuff). But liquor is all sequestered in "ABC" stores. They've loosened the blue laws, so you can buy your grocery booze on Sunday morning, but the ABC stores are still closed all Sunday. Because you only offend your deity of choice if your drink is more than 20% alcohol, I guess.

But liquor is all sequestered in "ABC" stores.

The first time we went to Topsail for vacation, we had no idea what the ABC stores were, because all we could see on the sign was the big giant "ABC," but nothing that indicated it was a liquor store. We were half-convinced they were a chain of strip clubs trying to be discreet.

I THINK - not sure - that whether a grocery will carry beer and wine is decided on a store by store basis. My local grocery does carry it, but the selection is, at best, meh. There are actual liquor stores which have a better selection, so I go there ... although there's a convenience store just up the street from my place that has wine and beer - all the beer is cold, but only some of the wine. Again, the selection is limited, but it's close to home.

I still think of it as a novelty that I can get alcohol in many supermarkets now and feel guilty that I don't go to the liquor stores I used to go to that often anymore.

msbelle, good luck settling in!