Since opening on Queen West in 2008, Barchef's cocktails have become world famous.

But co-owner Brent VanderVeen has a problem. He has to keep reprinting his menu because he can't get the ingredients he needs from the LCBO.

Talk to this city's bartenders, especially those devoted to the burgeoning science of mixology, and they'll tell you the same thing. Ontario's liquor control board is falling way short of supplying them with world class brands.

"The LCBO makes it hard," said Rob Turenne of Queen West's Parts and Labour. "They release something I think every bar should have on its shelves, and then they delist it because the general public doesn't know much about it and it doesn't sell. Being an enthusiast of booze, it's really frustrating."

To hear these bar owners tell it, buying high-end booze in Toronto is shell game. A few bottles of Yellow Chartreuse show up unexpectedly at a random LCBO, they're bought up in short order, and then no one knows when, or if, it will ever come back again.

What's on the LCBO's shelves at any given time is so unpredictable VanderVeen and other mixologists have created a network to alert each other when something rare comes in. If a hot bottle is spotted at the store, the texts and emails start flying to a select group of bar owners.

"You make sure you've gotten there first and taken as much as you can purchase and then the email goes out," explains VanderVeen. "We want to make sure that the right bars in this city are getting the products."

LCBO spokesperson Chris Layton says the board is doing everything it can to satisfy establishments with liquor licenses. "We try to work with licensees to ensure that they can get the products they want," he said. "Our buyers are constantly following trends, looking at what's selling in international markets."

The LCBO has set up a consignment warehouse from which licensees can buy products that aren't generally stocked in the board's retail stores. If its not in the warehouse it can be ordered directly from the producer, but it still has to go through the LCBO and VanderVeen says it's hardly painless.

"It's such a grueling, long process," he complains. "It can be months, and they never give you a timeline. Sometimes you've ordered something and you've forgotten by the time it gets here."

There's also extra shipping and customs charges, but Layton says those only apply to exceptional orders. But it's impossible to order only a handful of bottles; you have to order by the case, or find a company that will package the number of bottles you want in a shippable format. It's illegal for several licensees to split a single case, so bar owners can't group together to make ordering easier. The net result is bartenders wait a long time for their product, and then have too much of it by the time it arrives.

As frustrating as the system can be, you can't blame it all on the LCBO's management. After all, Ontario's liquor board was set up in 1927 to ease us out of prohibition. The basic structure of the organization hasn't changed in 80 years.

The problem is that because the LCBO has a monopoly on selling booze in Ontario, it needs to be all things to all people; a wholesaler to bars and a retailer to the public, while also attempting to identify niche markets like high-end cocktails.

"We would be a pretty inefficient retailer if we kept products on our shelves that didn't sell," said the LCBO's Layton. "There are core popular products that all of our stores have to sell, and the other fifty per cent of products (are based on other factors). For example if the store is in an ethnic neighbourhood and there's a high demand for a certain product, Portuguese wine for instance, we'll put more of that in stock. We keep track of what's selling."

But the LCBO's management of supply and demand is imprecise at best. Cocktail connoisseurs were thrilled when the board recently decided to sell Hill's Absinthe, an expensive liquor from the Czech Republic. Their optimism didn't last long; the product was quickly discontinued, and it's been completely bought up in Toronto. Stores in rural Ontario still have it on the shelf however. Unless Killaloe, ON has a booming cocktail scene, something is amiss.

"I find they carry a lot of stupid products that no one will buy," said Turenne. "I go to the bigger LCBO's like the one at Summerhill or Queen's Quay, and it turns out there's just a bunch of junk."

The consensus among cocktail slingers in this city appears to be that the LCBO could use a little competition from a private booze wholesaler able to offer more variety. In fact in 2005 a government-ordered review found that partially privatizing the LCBO would improve customer selection, while also increasing government revenue by $200 million annually.

The Beverage Alcohol System Review recommended auctioning off the LCBO's liquor licenses on a store-by-store basis for fixed-year terms. Putting them up for auction every few years would provide a steady stream of revenue for the province, and competition between private retailers would encourage the introduction of new and hard-to-get liquors. The province could still ensure the responsible sale of alcohol by regulating prices and store hours, and selling licenses on a store-by-store basis would mean that there was no increase in the actual number of liquor retail outlets.

The report was flatly rejected by the province, most likely because of fears of a political backlash. The idea of a boutique liquor store that sells directly to cocktail specialists will remain pipe dream until the province decides to loosen its monopoly on liquor.

And that's too bad, because behind the bars at places like Goodnight, Barchef, and Miller's Tavern, exciting things are happening.

"There's a lot more talk about drink culture, and classics are coming back," said VanderVeen. "Cocktail culture is expanding in this city, but while it's growing there are going to be growing pains, and the LCBO is definitely causing some of them."