Dubai allows alcohol home delivery as virus shuts down bars

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The Champagne corks no longer pop at Dubai's infamous alcohol-soaked brunches. The blaring flat-screen televisions stand silent in the sheikhdom's sports bars. And the city-state's pubs have shrink-wrapped their now-idle beer taps.

This skyscraper-studded desert metropolis on the Arabian Peninsula has long been one of the wettest places in the Mideast in terms of alcohol consumption, its bars and licensed restaurants serving tourists, travelers and its vast population of foreign workers.

Up until the global coronavirus pandemic, that is. With the virus now threatening a crucial source of tax and general revenue for its rulers, Dubai's two major alcohol distributors have partnered to offer home delivery of beer, spirits and wine, yet another loosening of social mores in this Islamic city-state.

“Luxury hotels and bars have been the worse impacted within the sector and this had a direct impact on the alcohol consumption ... in the United Arab Emirates,” said Rabia Yasmeen, an analyst for market research firm Euromonitor International.

Maritime and Mercantile International, a subsidiary of the government-owned Emirates airline known as MMI, and African & Eastern partnered to create the website offering home delivery. Its products range from a $530 bottle of Don Julio 1942 Tequila to a $4.30 bottle of Indian blended whiskey, with beers and wines in between.

Their website legalhomedelivery.com, a nod toward the online bootleggers long operating in the gray margins of Dubai, describes the service as needed “in these unprecedented times.”

Tourists, the few remaining here, can use their passports to buy the alcohol. Residents, however, need an alcohol license, a plastic red card issued by Dubai police that requires annual...