How we operate
About us
Who runs Grand Cellar Spirits, how alcohol is sold here, and the rules that decide what we can and cannot do
Responsible service and the law
Who runs this
Grand Cellar Spirits is a small cellar rather than a chain. We buy, catalogue, photograph, store and sell rare and vintage bottles from eight origins, alongside a shorter list of things being made right now that are worth opening tonight.
Most of what is in the vault is a single bottle. It is handled once, described once, and cannot be replaced if we get it wrong, which is why the descriptions are long and the photographs show the flaws. We would rather lose a sale than have a bottle arrive as a surprise.
Why any of this exists at all is a longer answer, and it is on The Story. This page is the other half: not why we started, but how we are obliged to behave now that we have.
Responsible service of alcohol
Responsible service is not a sentence at the bottom of a page. It is a short list of things we do, and a shorter list of things we refuse to do, on every order without exception.
- Age, before anything else
Nobody reaches the catalogue without giving a date of birth. It is asked again when an order is placed, and checked against photographic ID at the door. A courier who cannot see ID brings the parcel back to us.
- Never to a minor
We do not sell to anyone under the legal drinking age, and we do not sell to an adult who is buying on a minor's behalf. Supplying alcohol to a minor is an offence, and it is not one we will help anybody commit.
- Never to someone intoxicated
Alcohol is not sold to, or handed over to, a person who is intoxicated. That applies at the point of delivery exactly as it would across a counter.
- Nothing left at a door
Alcohol is never left unattended, in a porch, with a neighbour or in a parcel locker. An adult signs for it or it comes back.
- Refusal needs no reason
Any order can be refused at any point before it ships, and a refusal never has to be justified to the buyer. Nothing is charged until an order is confirmed, so a refusal costs the buyer nothing.
- How this site is allowed to talk
Nothing here ties drinking to driving, to courage, to sexual or social success, or suggests that more of it is better. Nothing is styled to appeal to anyone under age. No bottle is sold on the promise of what it will do to you.
Alcohol is a drug and this is a shop that sells it. Nothing on this site is an argument for drinking more of it. If any of it is reading that way to you, tell us and we will change the wording.
Selling alcohol through a website
Selling alcohol online is not the same as selling anything else online, and a good deal of how this site behaves is a consequence of that rather than a design choice.
- A licence, issued state by state
Alcohol cannot be sold in Australia without a liquor licence, and licences are granted by each state and territory rather than nationally. The licence decides what may be sold, to whom, and where it may be delivered. It is the reason an address is refused at the order rather than at dispatch.
- Age checks are law, not courtesy
Verifying age is a legal obligation on the seller, not a politeness. That is why the gate cannot be dismissed, why the order form asks again, and why the courier asks a third time. Three checks is the point, not an oversight.
- Delivery is regulated separately
Several states set the hours alcohol may be delivered, require identification to be sighted on handover, and require a delay between an order and a same day delivery. Where a rule like that applies to an address, it applies to that order.
- Where we will not ship
We do not ship where the import or sale of alcohol is restricted. Where a buyer's own country sets a higher drinking age than ours, that age is the one that governs them. Import duty and local tax are the buyer's, and we do not understate a parcel's contents or value to reduce them.
- Old bottles are sold as they are
A vintage lot is sold as a collectible object, in the condition and with the labelling of its own period, which will not match what a producer would have to print today. Nothing here is decanted, refilled, topped up or relabelled.
This is a description of how the rules shape the site, not legal advice, and it does not replace the conditions of the licence a seller trades under or the law of the buyer's own country.
What this site keeps about you
The age gate keeps one yes or no in your own browser. The date of birth you type is compared against the drinking age and thrown away. It is never stored and never sent anywhere, because a yes or no answers the question and a date of birth is personal data we would then have to protect.
Placing an order stores your name, your email address, what you ordered and a reference. That is the whole record. There is no password anywhere on this site, because we never ask for one: to see a past order you give the email you used and the reference from the confirmation, and we ask for both because an email on its own would let anyone read a stranger's history.
Your basket and your currency choice sit in your browser rather than on our server, which is why they are still there when you come back on the same device and empty when you open the site on another. We do not sell or pass on anything in this paragraph.
Licence and registration
The details we trade under. A buyer is entitled to check them against the register held by the authority that issued them.
- Legal entity
Orchard Logistics Pty Ltd
- ABN
67 694 336 144
- Registered address
Sydney NSW
If something is wrong
Every lot is photographed and condition checked before it is packed, and anything we can see is written into the description before you buy. If a bottle still arrives as something other than what the page said it was, it comes back to us and you are not out of pocket.
Orders are traced by the reference on your confirmation. Sign in with that reference and the email you ordered under, and the order comes up.
Anything else, including a complaint about how a sale was handled, goes to hello@grandcellarspirits.com. A person reads it, and we answer complaints before we answer anything else.