Is Martha's Vineyard a Dry Island? Alcohol Rules, BYOB and Package Stores Town by Town (2026)

Every summer a reader lands in Vineyard Haven, walks up Main Street looking for a bottle of wine for the rental, and writes to ask whether the island is dry. The short answer is: it depends on which of the six towns you are standing in, and the rules have changed more in the last fifteen years than in the previous two hundred. Here is the whole map, town by town, with the history that explains it and the practical moves that get you a drink with dinner anywhere on the island. Checked against the towns and the state rules in September 2026.

How BYOB works up-island

In Chilmark and at the up-island spots that pour only beer and wine, bring-your-own is not a loophole, it is the system, and the restaurants have made it graceful. You carry in wine, beer or spirits, they open it, chill it, pour it and, at the Tavern, turn your bottle of rum into a Dark and Stormy with their own ginger syrup. Expect a corkage fee on wine at the sit-down places, typically in the $12 to $15 range per bottle, and none at the fish markets where you eat on a picnic table with the boats in front of you. Two rules of courtesy: ask when you book, and do not bring a bottle of something the restaurant already sells, which in the beer-and-wine towns means bring the spirits, not the Chardonnay. Our restaurant guide marks which places are BYOB and which have since added a license; State Road in West Tisbury, for one, now pours its own beer and wine.

Where to buy it

Only Oak Bluffs and Edgartown have package stores, so a week in a Chilmark or West Tisbury rental starts with a shopping stop down-island. Oak Bluffs has Jim’s Package Store on Lake Avenue by the harbor and Our Market on the harbor, which delivers across the island, a real service when the house is forty minutes up-island. Edgartown has Al’s Package Store on Upper Main Street, Your Market at the Triangle, Rosewater Wine and Spirits downtown and MV Wine and Spirits by the airport road. Vineyard Haven, for all its new restaurants, still has no liquor store, so the ferry-landing convenience of the town does not extend to the bottle. You can bring your own alcohol over on the ferry in your bags, and the bigger Steamship Authority boats sell beer, wine and mixed drinks at the snack bar for the crossing.

The state rules that apply everywhere

Massachusetts law sits on top of the town map. The drinking age is 21 and island bars card everyone who looks under forty, so carry a real ID. Happy hour, meaning discounted-drink promotions, has been illegal statewide since 1984; a repeal was working its way through the legislature in the summer of 2026, but until it becomes law do not expect two-for-one anything. Package stores may open on Sundays. And the beaches are dry in practice whatever the town: South Beach in Edgartown and State Beach along Beach Road both post no-alcohol rules, State Beach with a $50 fine, and the town beaches follow the same line. Open a bottle on the sand and the lifeguard will ask you to put it away.

How Vineyard Haven stopped being dry

The most interesting story on the map is the town that changed. Tisbury went dry in 1834 and stayed that way for 175 years. In 2008 a ballot question on beer and wine in restaurants ended in an exact tie, 690 votes to 690, and failed; it made the national papers. The town passed beer and wine with meals a year later, added full liquor with food in 2017, and in November 2022 voted almost two to one, 1,317 to 626, to let restaurants serve drinks without a meal. The restaurant boom that followed, nine new places in two years by our count, is the subject of the Vineyard Haven guide. Chilmark debated its own question at town meeting in 2023 and stayed dry, which most of Chilmark seems to prefer.

The practical summary

Staying down-island, you will not notice any of this. Staying up-island, do one shop in Oak Bluffs or Edgartown on the way in, ask each restaurant about corkage when you book, bring spirits rather than wine to the beer-and-wine towns, and leave the bottles in the car at the beach. The food tour and the nightlife guide cover the drinking that is worth the trip.