Vintages Release: Scrum Alert

Saturday is the day that Vintages (the exclusive arm of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario) releases new products. The competition can, apparently, get quite violent:

Shoving matches have been known to ensue over coveted vintages, and, from time to time, collectors have even been caught stealing prized merchandise from other people's shopping carts. One LCBO customer regularly purchases large quantities of expensive wines to display for guests on Saturday night, only to bring them back for a refund on Monday. "We actually had an employee injured recently when two people too impatient to wait reached over his shoulder and ripped open a wooden box," says Bailey. "They sliced the edge of his face."

On another recent occasion, a Toronto contractor devised an ingenious plan to thwart the LCBO's one-bottle-per-person policy on limited-supply vintages. At 5 a.m. that Saturday, he parked his construction trailer in the wine-store parking lot and paid his crew to line up in one-hour shifts. (They'd return to the trailer for coffee, doughnuts and bathroom breaks.) By the end of the morning, they'd bought up every bottle in the store.