The 10 Most Expensive States to Buy Tequila

Ever notice your go-to bottle of tequila ringing up at wildly different prices depending on where you buy it? You're not imagining it.

A big, hidden driver is the state excise tax - a per-gallon tax every state charges on distilled spirits, quietly baked into the shelf price before you ever see it.

The gap is enormous.

On a standard 750ml bottle of tequila (at 40% ABV), that tax runs from about $0.40 in Missouri to $7.33 in Washington a nearly 18x difference on the exact same tequila! And that's just the excise tax: in the 17 "control states," where the government itself runs wholesale or retail liquor sales, an additional markup gets layered on top, so the real price gap at the register can be even wider.

So before you blame your local store, check the map. Where your bottle crosses the state line matters almost as much as what's inside it. And maybe for some of you, it’s time for a road trip?

Spirits are taxed at two levels. First, the federal government charges a nationwide excise tax collected by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), which applies everywhere and doesn't impact state-to-state price differences.

The variation you see on the shelf comes from the second layer: each state sets its own excise tax, typically through its legislature, and charges it on a per-gallon basis (converted to your 750 ml bottle in the tables below). Every state picks its own rate, and updates it on its own timeline.

How a state actually collects the alcohol tax money is dealt with in two, very different ways.

In license states, the government simply issues licenses to private wholesalers and retailers and taxes what they sell. It’s a straightforward per-gallon excise.

In the 17 control states, the government itself acts as the wholesaler (and sometimes the retailer), effectively running the liquor business in that region, and building its revenue into a markup.

Sometimes that price hike is the source of the excise tax revenue. In other states, the government charges a markup and also still charges the excise tax. Ouch.

That's why control states like Washington, Oregon, and Virginia dominate the "most expensive" list, and why their real cost to tequila fans is even higher there. The state charges more for the bottle, and has high taxes as well.