Andover Liquors Inc

I recently needed an ordered delivered to my son for his 31^st birthday. Andrea was awesome in helping me make sure that it arrived on time and helped with the selection of the great craft beers that my son likes. She got right on it, followed up with me to be sure someone was home to receive it and then let me know that it was delivered .I think Andover Liquors and especially Andrea should be proud of their work and their service. If you see Andrea high five her for me.

Awful service and prices. Would only come for the convience. Recently remoedeled but still a joke

So lucky to live close to this place. The staff is extremely friendly and knowledgable, and far more approachable than other nearby wine vendors. I love being able to walk in to the wine section, and feel comfortable knowing I can ask for a $ 15 bottle recommendation without being upsold, or get excellent advice on an «occasion» bottle… all at the same place. The recent renovation is icing on the cake — the store looks gorgeous. The cooler and beer sections are particularly easier to navigate than in the past.

Great selection, but the prices are almost double what you would pay at NH liquors… I bought a bottle of Meyers dark rum (1L) for $ 30 and the next day saw the same bottle at NH liquor for $ 17…I’d say that’s a rip-​off. I can understand 10% or 20% higher, but 90% is just plain wrong. I won’t be buying anything from Andover again.

Wow. Such an unassuming store front next to the Stop and Shop and the now closed RiteAid. This spot is full of great items second only to the bigger NH State spots but not second in service. At Andover Liquors the expertise is much, much higher and more consistent.
They can special order just about anything they don’t have in the shop — I got myself some hard to find Batavia Arak from them. Keep in mind that special orders can take a lot longer than they will quote you.
They’re prices are good (for Massachusetts).
PASS

I’ve shopped here a ton of times. They have a GREAT beer selection, good wines and spirits and the prices are comparable with the NH liquor stores. More wine in the fridge would be good.
I would have given them 4 or 5 stars but I was just in there looking for a great bottle of scotch as a gift. I couldn’t find any staff, eventually asked someone if they could help me with a scotch recommendation and they replied they’d be there as soon as they helped a customer check out. I stood there for maybe 5 minutes and then looked to see if they were still checking out the customer — nope — they’d finished and just gone to the office. Rude.

They have an impressive and well organized selection of wines here, a decent number of beers and craft beers, the usual liquor, and even some sake! The better wines are in sections along the outside, and the «bargain flagons» are on an inside aisle. I liked the wine selection in general, but I felt the «bargain flagons» were about $ 1 a flagon more expensive than the equivalent selection I could buy elsewhere. So I’d say come here for selections you can’t find elsewhere nearby.
If you come in looking for 90+ wines — as we were — be aware that they often buy these in bulk, and they will be out at times, i.e., between orders. That’s what happened to us last night. But one of the staff was nice enough to help us by both explaining this and pointing us to equivalent wines. A few seconds later I heard her tell someone else she was leaving for the day, so it was nice of her to spend an extra minute or two with us instead of rushing out the door when her shift was over.

This is a bit long but I figure it should give the next bride an idea of what to expect.
I just made our final payment for our wedding that took place at Smolak Farms this past Saturday. At this point we’re happy because we don’t need to deal with any more stress. The ONLY reason we used Andover Liquors services was that they were THE EXCLUSIVE liquor service allowed on the farm. And with the farm saying the reason being is that they know what type of people will show up and what type of service they provide, we bit. The reason I gave 1 star is that the place has a buy back policy, so whatever unopened bottle of liquor that wasn’t consumed, they don’t charge you for.
So here’s the deal.
We had an initial quote strictly based on guest count (100 – 125) and we booked based on that price. Coordinated the month before the wedding and went through what exactly we wanted served and the quote was revised accordingly. We had requested that they offer a sangria bar based on recipes I provided. Only glitch was I had to pre-​make the simple syrup for one of the recipes and drop it off the day before… no biggie. So far so good. BTW, we were to have open bar for the full duration of the event. 5:45/6:00pm til about 10:30pm (event was scheduled to be over by 11pm).
Day of the Wedding:
4:00-ish — Liquor service shows up. Reason I know this was that I came to the farm straight from the salon and ended up right behind the caterer truck on the road to the farm… they were there before the liquor service.
5:45−6:00pm — Cocktail hr with passed appetizers. My husband was approached to get permission to serve the cognac. He gives the ok but asked how many was brought. What told a case was brought but there’s another back at the store. He indicates that 2 cases will be needed for the whole night. (Which is what we had requested to be brought in the first place).
8:45pm-ish — Bar makes the decision to shut down based on how the guest was. I have no idea how they came to this conclusion… we are a young crowd and we are loud with or without liquor. If certain individuals had too much, they are usually cut off, not the whole party. Have they never dealt with a young crowd? One guy did throw up because he drank something that did not agree with him. The only reason I knew they shut down was because around 9pm I had guests approached me and ask why they were not serving any more liquor.
So liquor was technically served for about 2 ½ to 3 hours max. I was so busy that I didn’t get a chance to swing by and asked what was going on. Before I knew it, they were packed up and gone (I’d say around 9:30pm at the latest, party winded down sooner that we thought at 10pm). Ok… I figure I’ll discuss it later thinking the final bill shouldn’t be that much because almost every guest said goodbye to me and not one of them were drunk. In fact the only one that was drunk was my husband. Our final guest count was much smaller that we originally thought at about 85 – 90 guest and that included lots of children. Called the following monday but was not returned a call for a couple of days and included an email with final invoice… more than double the cost of the deposit!!! (FYI, deposit is 50% of the quoted price for 100 – 125 guests) Biggest line consumed items that I noticed unusual off the bat was the cognac (22−750ml bottles) and 150-​bottles of just corona!!! Complained and was informed that there was a ‘typo’ on the corona (it was 25 not 150) but the cognac is correct. My husband called them to discuss that there is no way 22 bottle was consumed because we had requested only 2 case be brought (6 per case). After a heated argument with the event coordinator and store manager with them claiming that there are 12 per case and with 2 bottles left, we consumed 22. My husband requested an invoice from their distributor indicating that there is indeed 12 per case. A few minutes later, I received an apology call letting me know that there was 6 per case and they will send me an updated invoice. Why not check, like I originally asked, before being adamant that we were wrong?
WIth just the cognac being $ 58/​bottle this is not a cheap error! With me finding 2 huge errors, I am very concerned about the accuracy of the rest of the bill. Since we no longer want to deal with this, paid the difference and decided to just share our story.
With about 60 people actually drinking (even my photographer came to me and mention that this was the first wedding she attended that had so many kids), let me break down what I am told we consumed within 2 ½ to 3 hours. Please keep in mind that besides the groom, no one left drunk.
3 bottles of vodka
1 bottle of gin
2 bottles of rum
2 bottles of cuervo
2 bottles of jack
10 bottles of cognac
12 bottles of wine
105 bottles of beer
3 different kinds of sangria (each in gallon dispensers)
I’ll let you decide whether or not me and my husband was jipped.

BEST WINE SHOP North of Boston! Your missing one of the best selections of Wine in New England, if you have never been in Andover Liquors. Andrea DiFiore, Wine Manager is simply amazing! Andrea has been our wine purveyor for years. Her pallet is fabulous, just tell her what you like and she will select wines to surprise you time and time again. We have such trust in Andrea’s pallet we simply email her when we want a case of white and red. She takes the time to hand select our order and has it waiting by the cash register for pickup. Thank you Andrea for years of great service, it is a pleasure doing business with you!

Andover Liquors is the only place of its kind that we go to. The diverse and extensive selections, knowledgeable and friendly staff make it distinctly above average. They really take the time to get to know what we love as far as wines go and always hit it out of the park be it every day wines or cellar ones. On top of that, they carry a great selection of pretty much anything you’d need from cognac to cordials and everything in between. Highly recommend the place to anyone.

Welcome to Andover. Where the liquor stores are nice and overpriced! Everything here is more expensive than any other liquor store you’ve ever been to. I DID find a Pinot here that I don’t see too often but that I LOVE, so I got a couple bottles. They were $ 3 more than anywhere else but I had to get them. Nice selection of everything — wine, hard booze, beer. I liked the place but take note– you’re in Andover. It’s a rich town. And the rich like to pay more for stuff.

This place is rather deceiving and i’m sort of just realizing it. They appear to have a really large selection, but i swear alot of it is probably undrinkable at this point, especially since it looks like most of the 22oz bottles of beer are located directly under a heating duct and have dust baked into the glass. BUT! they still obviously have beers that they do turn around quickly, which is the stuff that people are normally on the look for. For me i really like going here with a couple of friends spending a decent amount of time looking for a beer and being really obnoxious, gotten quite a few really weird looks from the people that work there. One of the guys that works here apparently kind of looks like me, i don’t really see it.

Andover Liquors is fine. Their beer selection is the best in the area. They have a few hundred different beers in their beer isle. They are mostly dusty and old, but that’s because everyone drinks bud light. You can always find a new beer to try from all those craft brew hippy companies popping up. They recently started a deal where if you buy 6 different beers you get 15% off your purchase. They’ve got a good wine selection as well.

This is not your average packy. Though not a huge booze emporium like Kappy’s, Andover Liquors has an impressive array of beer, wine and distilled spirits, as well as some slightly overpriced cigars (even w/​o adding the Bay State’s confiscatory tobacco tax).
Knowledgeable staff who actually listen to their customers (for instance, though I like plenty of exotic beers, they also stock Narragansett kicker cans, and the beer manager has a nifty presence on Twitter, where she interacts with customers).
Only drawback is that, occasionally, the front-​of-​the-​house operation is a bit slow, and the checkout queue isn’t especially well laid out. If you’re not in a hurry, though, and have business in Andover’s Shawsheen Plaza (featuring the Grassfields Restaurant, a Stop & Shop and a bunch of other smaller stores), it’s a real gem.
Also, if you’re a ‘Gansett fan like me, this seems to be the only packy in the Valley that sells the stuff.

So I was told by my caterer (Two Chefs Are Better Than One) that this was an excellent source for the budget bride — and she was right. The original person I dealt with ended up retiring… right before my wedding was going to happen, but luckily he had penciled me into the books and Lindsey, the new marketing director/​coordinator, knew exactly who I was when I called a month before the wedding to check-​in. Well done Andover Liquors! I could not be more thrilled with the change as Lindsey was extremely responsive to emails (within a day or two) and was more than happy to help out in any way. I didn’t know what type of wines were good, so she asked me for a price range and then picked out some YellowTail wines for me that were popular. She also helped select my champagne and all the while, happily sent me updated quotes. What is nice is that even though hiring their bartenders tend to be more expensive than most ($ 40/​hr), their liquor liability (usually $ 1 per person at other companies) is FREE. Read that right, FREE. So figure out, if you’re having a 100 person wedding, that is already a discount of $ 100.
At the wedding, the alcohol was laid out very nicely on the table, which I really liked since normally, it is hidden in the back and there is a very boring table with a drink menu, but it completely added a nice decoration to the wedding. The bartenders were extremely friendly and would give me a wave and «congrats» every time I walked by. Lindsey, bless her heart, even gave me a second bartender at NO ADDITIONAL COST since they were «training» him. I think she was just being a sweet and hiding it.
The best part? Andover Liquors does it by consumption, which means that they buy back all the unopened bottles of wine/​beer/​liquor at the end of the night. And they didn’t want to waste anything, so the bottles that they couldn’t take back? They gave to me since I technically already paid for it. These are good people and if you’re having a wedding/​event, you should hire them… you won’t regret, I promise.

Andover Liquors is definitely unexpected.
Need a bottle of liquor– they’ve got it. Need some wine– they have a fantastic selection. Beer– you can’t beat the choices. You can buy a bottle or ‘weird’ beer that is brewed in Lithuania or some microbrew from MA; they have the largest selection I have found anywhere in MA. Everyone who works there is very friendly and always great at recommendations.
Once every few months, they do these huge grand wine tastings that are pretty amazing (free and usually ~30+wines). At the tastings, they offer discounts off of ½ case and larger discounts off of a case. They often will have beer at the wine tastings as well. Its a pretty spectacular event.

Honestly, one can’t be surprised when they find a well stocked liquor store in the suburbs so I applaud Andover Liquors for living up to the reputation of WASP living.
The space is huge, the selection is extensive, and the staff is adequate.
Why not 5 stars?
They seriously need to learn how to keep popular wines chilled for easy consumption — they have beer down — but wine is like beer’s friend next door — respect it.
Cut to me and my Kentucky Derby hat throwing the choice bottle of wine in the freezer prior to a typical Saturday consumption. Wine shouldn’t be this hard!

5 stars for the selection, 3 stars for the knowledgeable but grumpy help, 1 star for not having directions on their web site. I’d take off more for the grumpy help but we’re just coming out of a nasty ice storm and most people have a right to be grumpy this week. Not to mention working retail in mid-​December… Anyway, the average of all that is 3 stars. Not negative, but according to Unilocal 3 stars means «A-​OK».
Andover Liquors is there when you need the selection. Other liquor stores are there when you need some friendly help. But I’m from New Hampshire where the prices are better so all I need them for is the selection when I’m looking for something uncommon. I went, did my Christmas shopping, and I’ll be back next December if I can’t find what I’m looking for closer to home.
They have a huge selection of liquors, wines, and beers. If you want to show up at a friends house with a bottle of something different, this is a place where you’ll find it.

Large selection of beer, wine, and liquor. Reasonable prices.