Kosher Liquor Store in Crown Heights, Brooklyn

Wine By The Case is a kosher liquor store at 511 Empire Boulevard in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Most people know the shop for wine, and the name says so, but a little over four hundred spirits are on this site and there is more on the shelf than we have managed to photograph. Whiskey, bourbon, single malt, vodka, tequila, gin, rum, cognac, liqueur and arak. Almost everything in the shop is kosher, and the handful of bottles that are not say so in the name, on the shelf and on this website, so nobody has to guess at the register.

Where the liquor store is

511 Empire Boulevard, Brooklyn NY 11225, on the block between Brooklyn Avenue and Kingston Avenue. About a seven minute walk from 770 Eastern Parkway and a few minutes from Kingston Avenue. Phone is (347) 533-8586. There is parking on Empire and on the side streets, and you can order on this site and collect in the shop instead of waiting for a delivery.

What is on the shelves

• Whiskey and scotch is the biggest part of the liquor side, and it breaks down into single malt, blended scotch, bourbon, rye and Irish.
• Vodka, from the everyday bottles a shul kiddush goes through to the ones people bring as a gift.
• Tequila and mezcal, split into blanco, reposado and añejo.
• Brandy and cognac, including cognac by grade and the slivovitz, fig and grape brandies that come out at a farbrengen.
• Gin, rum and liqueur.
• Arak, the Israeli shelf, plain and flavoured.

The full run is in the spirits collection. If a bottle you want is not listed, call the shop before you assume we do not have it. Between this store and our sister shop the range is wider than what has made it onto the site.

Kosher certification on spirits

This is the question we get asked at the counter more than any other, and it is a fair one, because a liquor shelf is not like a wine shelf. Wine needs a hechsher because of what wine is. Most distilled spirits are a different discussion, and the part that matters is usually what happened to the bottle after it came off the still, not the still itself.

Two things we will not do. We will not tell you a bottle is certified when the label does not say so, and we will not pasken for you. What we do instead is put the certification on the listing where there is one, keep the bottles that carry no certification clearly separate from the ones that do, and hand you the bottle to read if you want to read it. Some of the shelf is under a mainstream hechsher, some of it is on a published acceptable list rather than a certification, and the difference is worth knowing before you buy for a simcha. If your rov holds a particular way, bring that with you and we will find something that fits it.

For anything going on a table where a caterer or hired waiters will be pouring, the mevushal question is a wine question and not a spirits one. There is a full explanation of mevushal here.

Buying for a simcha or a yom tov

A bar for a hall is a different order from a bottle for Friday night. The rough shape of it: one bottle of spirits covers a lot more people than one bottle of wine, so most simcha orders here are heavy on wine and light on liquor, with two or three bottles of whiskey and one of vodka doing the whole room. Bring the number of guests and we will work it out at the counter, or call ahead and we will have it ready to collect.

Around yom tov the shop closes for whole stretches and the last buying hour matters more than the price. The Tishrei page lists every closure this autumn with the last hour to buy before each one.

Case pricing is wine only

The shop is called Wine By The Case and the case discount is real: ten per cent off automatically once twelve or more bottles of wine are in the cart, no code needed. It applies to wine. Spirits are sold by the bottle and are not part of the twelve. A bottle of whiskey can sit in the same cart as a case of wine, it simply does not count toward the twelve and is not discounted. We would rather say that here than have you find it at checkout.

Delivery and pickup

Five dollars flat anywhere in Crown Heights, with no minimum order. Ten dollars flat anywhere else in Brooklyn. Twenty dollars flat to Manhattan or Queens. Pickup at the store is free and is on its own tab at checkout. The delivery page lists the postcodes in each band.

If you are ordering for Shabbos, order earlier in the day rather than late Friday afternoon. Friday is the busiest few hours of our week and the drivers are running against candle lighting the same as everyone else.

Hours

• Sunday to Thursday, 10am to 10pm
• Friday, 8am until thirty minutes before candle lighting
• Shabbos, closed

Friday closing moves through the year with candle lighting, so it is close to 8pm in June and mid afternoon in December. The time shown on this site is the real one for the current week, not a fixed winter guess.

Also on this site

The kosher wine side of the shop covers the Israeli, French, Italian and Californian shelves and how a case is put together. Wine by the case explains the twelve bottle discount in full. Wine by country is the quickest way in if you already know where you want the bottle to come from.