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Is Martha's Vineyard a dry island? Town by town: Chilmark is fully dry and BYOB, West Tisbury and Aquinnah pour beer and wine with meals, Vineyard Haven serves full liquor but has no liquor store, and only Oak Bluffs and Edgartown have package stores. Corkage, beach rules, the ferry and the state laws, checked September 2026.
The Napa shelf at a down-island package store: Faust and Duckhorn around 85 dollars, Joseph Phelps 115, Dunn 139.
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. It depends on which of the six towns on Martha's Vineyard you are standing in, and the rules have changed more in the last fifteen years than in the previous two hundred. Below is the map, town by town, with the history behind it and how to get a drink with dinner anywhere on the island. Checked against the towns and the state rules in September 2026.
The beer wall at an Edgartown market: domestic one side, imported the other, with cider donut cans and craft cases stacked in front.
The Chilmark Tavern: you bring the bottle, they bring the glassware, the ice and the house-made mixers.
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In Chilmark, bring-your-own is simply how dinner works, and the restaurants handle it well. You carry in wine, beer or spirits, they open it, chill it, pour it and, at the Tavern, add their mixers to your bottle for a charge. Expect a charge at the sit-down places (the Tavern lists chillers, bottle service, glassware and mixers for a charge but has not published the amounts), and none at the fish markets where you eat on a picnic table with the boats in front of you. It's worth asking about corkage when you book, and keeping your own bottles for Chilmark. In West Tisbury and Aquinnah the restaurants pour their own beer and wine, and a restaurant that holds a liquor license cannot let you bring your own, so plan to drink what they serve there. 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.
Larsen’s in Menemsha, with the line out front. Lobster goes to the picnic tables, and the bottle comes from your own cooler with no corkage.
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 at 17A Airport Road, in the small row of shops at the airport entrance. That one is the stop if you are coming from a flight or driving up-island along the Edgartown to West Tisbury Road: open seven days year-round, and the hours posted in its window at the end of October 2026 were 9 to 7 Monday to Saturday and 11 to 6 on Sunday. 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 MV Wine and Spirits sign on the weathered boards at 17A Airport Road, a biplane painted between the words.
The porch at MV Wine and Spirits in late October, pumpkins along the rail and a flag out front.
The numbered beer coolers inside, labeled The Gym, with the wine racks at the back of the store.
An Oak Bluffs package store down a flight of stairs under a gift shop, with a hand-painted sign for liquors, wines, beers and snacks to go and the wine racks at the bottom. Two towns have package stores; the other four do not.
Our Market on the Oak Bluffs harbor at night: groceries, newspapers and liquor under one sign.
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Massachusetts law sits on top of the town map. The drinking age is 21 and island bars card everyone who looks under forty, so a real ID is worth having on you. 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 there are no two-for-one deals. Package stores may open on Sundays. The down-island beaches are dry: South Beach in Edgartown and State Beach along Beach Road both post no-alcohol rules, State Beach with a $50 fine, and Oak Bluffs bans open containers on its beaches and town property. Open a bottle on the sand there and you can expect to be asked to put it away. Menemsha is the known exception: Chilmark’s bylaws and its posted beach rules say nothing about alcohol.
Offshore Ale Company, the island’s brewpub, on Kennebec Avenue in Oak Bluffs after dark.
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.
Staying down-island, you will not notice any of this. Staying up-island, one shop in Oak Bluffs or Edgartown on the way in covers the week; after that it's a matter of asking about corkage when you book, keeping your own bottles for Chilmark and leaving them in the car at the beach. The food tour and the nightlife guide cover the drinking that is worth the trip.
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No, but one town still is. Oak Bluffs and Edgartown are fully wet with bars and package stores; Vineyard Haven pours everything in restaurants but has no liquor store; West Tisbury and Aquinnah serve beer and wine with meals only; Chilmark, including Menemsha, sells nothing at all and every restaurant there is bring-your-own.
In Oak Bluffs or Edgartown. The package stores include Jim’s on Lake Avenue and Our Market on the Oak Bluffs harbor, and Al’s, Your Market, Rosewater and MV Wine and Spirits in Edgartown. Buy before you head up-island; there is no store in Vineyard Haven, West Tisbury, Chilmark or Aquinnah.
A sign on the side wall points to the bottle redemption around the corner. Massachusetts puts a 5-cent deposit on beer and soda containers, and this is where the empties go back.
Your Market at the Triangle in October 2026: grey shingles, green awnings and the beach murals painted in the windows.
You carry in wine, beer or spirits and the restaurant opens, chills and pours it; the Chilmark Tavern will mix cocktails from your bottle. Expect a charge at the sit-down places (the Chilmark Tavern charges for chillers, glassware and bottle service but has not published the amounts) and none at the Menemsha fish markets, where you eat at picnic tables. Ask when you book.
Yes, in restaurants and their bars, since 2017 with food and since 2022 without a meal. Tisbury was dry from 1834 until 2009. There is still no standalone bar and no package store in town.
West Tisbury, since 2012, and Aquinnah, since 2008, both with meals only. Neither has a full bar (Aquinnah’s Outermost Inn may also pour cordials), and a licensed restaurant cannot allow BYOB, so if you want your own bottle, book dinner in Chilmark.
From MV Vacation, written on Martha’s Vineyard · https://mvvacation.com/blog/marthas-vineyard-dry-towns-alcohol-rules-byob · printed . Hours, prices and schedules change; the page online is the current one.
The island's farmers markets, checked October 2026: the West Tisbury Farmers Market at the Agricultural Hall (Saturdays to October 31, 9 AM to noon), the Harvest Festival on October 24, the indoor winter market, Edgartown's summer Tuesday market, and the farm stands that stay open all year.
Where Martha's Vineyard's oysters, bay scallops and quahogs come from: the public solar hatchery on Lagoon Pond that turned fifty in 2026, the dozen oyster farms in Katama Bay, Menemsha Pond and Vineyard Sound, the wild beds in the great ponds, the autumn scallop season and its limits, visitor shellfish permits by town, why rain closes a pond, and where to eat them.
Lobster on Martha's Vineyard from trap to paper plate: how the small Menemsha fleet fishes, the Massachusetts rules on size, egg-bearing females and whale-safe gear, where to buy lobster off the boat (Larsen's, Menemsha Fish Market, The Net Result), how to eat it on the dock with your own bottle, and how a visitor can get a permit and catch a few.
Every supermarket and market on Martha's Vineyard with posted hours: Stop and Shop, Cronig's, Reliable Market, Alley's, the meat and fish markets, the Falmouth Stop and Shop before the ferry, Instacart and pre-stocking delivery, and an honest word on island prices.
Every farm stand and visitable farm on Martha's Vineyard, checked with the farms in September 2026: Morning Glory, Beetlebung, North Tabor, Mermaid Farm's 24-hour dairy shed, Native Earth, Allen Farm, Island Alpaca, the FARM Institute and the West Tisbury Farmers Market, with hours, honor-system rules and the fall pumpkin dates.
A reader planning a trip for May 2027 asked us what would actually be open. The honest year-round map: restaurants, cafes, trails, museums and services that never close, town by town, plus the calendar of when everything else reopens.
Island tip of the day Timing No. 73 of 79 New tip at midnight, island time
Lambert's Cove Beach is resident-sticker in summer (open to everyone from 5 to 9 PM); from mid-September it opens to everyone.
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