Virginia ABC’s rare liquor lottery glitch leads to ‘statistically abnormal’ results

Liquor enthusiasts were left consulting their calculators this week after the results of a state lottery to win rare spirits appeared to be statistically impossible.

Virginia ABC held a lottery April 19-23 to allow winners to purchase four liquors with limited availability — George T. Stagg Bourbon, Thomas H. Handy Sazerac Rye, William Larue Weller Bourbon, and Sazerac Rye 18 Year Old — and each product had between 35,000 and 38,000 entries vying for a taste. The odds of winning, based on the number of bottles for sale and amount of people who entered the lottery was 1 in 48.68 for the Stagg, 1 in 125.27 for the Handy, 1 in 179.02 for the Weller, and 1 in 739.41 for the Sazerac.

After an internal audit, VABC concluded that staff conducted the drawing process using the established procedures, wherein entrants are assigned random numbers and drawings are witnessed by an authorized staff member, but there was “an issue in the sorting of the lottery entry data in our software.”

“The manner in which the entries were sorted contributed to the statistically abnormal results,” VABC said in a statement.

Two entrants won all four products, 50 won three of the products, and 229 won two products. VABC will honor the results and sell the products as they would have normally, the authority said.

In future lotteries, VABC will add an additional layer of review to the sorting process. It is also testing a new electronic lottery system.

Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, gavin.stone@virginiamedia.com