Wine mystery boxes offered through Pennsylvania-owned Fine Wine and Good Spirits website

After a year of heightened liquor sales because of the coronavirus pandemic, state officials are offering a package that could help switch up those go-to quarantine drinks.

Boxes of wine are available for purchase on the Fine Wine and Good Spirits website, which promotes the sale as “uncork a new mystery.” It is the second time for the promotion.

“It just seemed like the time to bring this one back based on its prior success,” said state Liquor Control Board spokesman Shawn Kelly, noting the first run was in October 2019.

The wine mystery boxes, which come in packages of two, four, six or 12 bottles, feature an assortment of red, white and rose wines. Bottles of wine in the box would cost about $12 on average, said Elizabeth Brassell, a spokeswoman for the state Liquor Control Board. Still, she noted, the box includes a variety of bottles, including high-and middle-end wines as well as value wine.

Prices for the boxes range from almost $23 to $137, which according to Kelly, is a savings of 6.2% to 30% on bottles included in the package.

That’s comparable to the 27% savings offered by packages such as The Wall Street Journal Wine, which costs almost $70 for 12 bottles of wine and wine glasses. Other places, such as Naked Wines, advertise bottles of wine at up to 60% off retail prices.

Brassell said during the first day of the mystery wine box promotion this year, 322 boxes sold for a total of 2,638 bottles of wine. During the full week of the 2019 sale, 344 boxes sold, or 1,286 bottles of wine. In all, $11,400 was generated through the 2019 mystery wine box.

“We have offered more box size options this year than we offered the last year, so that would explain why there’s more units and less bottles this year,” Brassell said.

For Fine Wine and Good Spirits, the promotion comes after a year of heightened sales that were offset by the almost month-long closure of liquor stores this spring. During that closure — which ran from March 17 until April 1, when online sales resumed — stores lost up to $6.5 million per day, a Tribune-Review analysis found.

Online sales skyrocketed, however, with $1.4 million in sales from April 1-11. During that period, customers placed 15,017 orders for 76,214 bottles of wine and liquor.

Kelly noted there was no particular reason why officials decided to run the wine mystery box promotion at this time, adding, “We run various promotions at various times of the year.”

The 12-wine mystery boxes are available at finewineandgoodspirits.com until Wednesday. Substitutions or returns on the boxes are not permitted.