Memorial Day 2026 Sunday Day-Of Guide: Local Courier, Same-Day Pickup & the 'Already-in-the-Cabinet' Cocktail Plan B
It's Sunday. The cookout is tomorrow. UPS Air closed Friday afternoon, and even our Ground network can't put a bottle on a porch in 24 hours for most of the country. So today's guide is short on options and honest about all of them. There are three real paths left: local same-day courier in the metros where we have it, same-day in-store pickup at the warehouse, or — for the buyers who didn't see this coming — the "already in the cabinet" cocktail Plan B, where we tell you which three workhorse bottles you almost certainly already own can stretch into a 12-person Memorial Day spread.
Yesterday's Saturday order guide covered the courier-vs-Tuesday-arrival math for buyers who were okay with a bottle landing after the weekend. Sunday is different — by tonight, the cookout planning is done, the ice is bought, the burgers are seasoned. This is the day to be realistic about what you can still get and what you should mix with what you already have.
The 7 bottles in this guide
Path 1: Same-day local courier (NY/NJ, Chicago, Los Angeles only)
If you are in our local-courier coverage zone — Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Hoboken/Jersey City, Newark airport corridor, downtown Chicago + North Side, West Loop + Lincoln Park, Los Angeles County (Westside, DTLA, Pasadena, parts of the Valley) — Sunday afternoon orders placed before approximately 4 PM local will hit your door before 9 PM the same night. The premium runs $25–$40 over standard shipping depending on the metro and how many bottles. Worth it for a single Memorial Day order, but build the order around the smallest number of high-impact bottles.
The Sunday-courier bottle list looks different from a Thursday Ground list. You're picking for cocktail flexibility, not collection value:
- Wild Turkey 101 ($32.99) — high-rye, 101 proof. Builds a serious mint julep, an Old Fashioned with backbone, or a Manhattan that doesn't disappear under the vermouth. The single most flexible workhorse bourbon at this price.
- Maker's Mark 46 ($44.99) — wheated, French-oak finished, 94 proof. The "Maker's but better" pick that satisfies guests who only drink Maker's. Sips neat with one cube; plays well in a julep.
- Tito's Handmade Vodka ($24.99) — the universal cookout vodka. Mules, lemonade-spiked anything, vodka-soda for guests who don't want bourbon.
- La Marca Prosecco ($17.99) — the only sparkling pick that survives a 90-degree afternoon. Aperol spritzes, Bellinis, or a clean pour for anyone who isn't drinking brown spirit on a hot day.
Four bottles, roughly $120 before courier fee, covers a 12-person cookout if you also have basic mixers (club soda, lemons, simple syrup, ginger beer) in the house. If you need a tequila to round out the bar for margaritas, add Casamigos Blanco ($49.99) — clean, mixes well, the guests who order margaritas at restaurants will recognize the bottle.
Path 2: Same-day warehouse pickup
Anyone within roughly 45 minutes of our New Jersey warehouse (Bergen / Hudson / Essex / Union County, most of Manhattan and the Bronx, parts of Westchester) can place an order Sunday for same-day in-store pickup. Cut-off is 5 PM ET; the pickup window runs until 7 PM. This is the path for premium and allocated bottles that courier can't carry — anything from our allocated & rare shelf, plus older bottles where you want to confirm the actual bottle before you pay.
Sunday pickup is also how you handle the gift situation. If you're attending a cookout and you want to show up with something that signals you tried — Buffalo Trace ($78.99), Wild Turkey Longbranch ($39.99), or Eagle Rare 10 Year ($49.99) all qualify — pickup gets you the bottle in your hand by 7 PM, in time to wrap it tonight or hand it over tomorrow at the cookout. A handful of bottles that can do real double-duty as both a host gift and a sippable contribution to the host's bar.
Path 3: The "Already in the Cabinet" Cocktail Plan B
If you are not in a courier metro and not within driving distance of the warehouse, the truthful answer is: nothing we ship today will arrive in time for tomorrow's cookout. That is okay. Three workhorse bottles that already live in most American liquor cabinets can stretch surprisingly far if you stop trying to make four different drinks and pick one good batch instead.
If you have any bourbon in the house — Buffalo Trace, Maker's Mark, Wild Turkey, Bulleit, Four Roses, Knob Creek, Jim Beam, anything — you can run a mint julep bar. The mint julep bar guide from earlier this weekend has the exact crushed-ice trick and the 12/20/30-guest batch math. You'll need 2 oz bourbon, 0.5 oz simple syrup, 8 mint leaves, crushed ice per drink. Simple syrup is sugar + water. Mint grows on every grocery store herb shelf for $2.49 a clamshell. This is the cleanest Plan B in the playbook.
If you have any rye or any whiskey at all, run an Old Fashioned batch. Our Old Fashioned batch guide walks the math for 12 drinks at a time: 24 oz whiskey, 3 oz simple syrup, 24 dashes Angostura, 24 orange-peel expressions, stirred and held in a pitcher with one large ice block. Easier than building one at a time, holds for 90 minutes without dilution if you keep the ice block intact.
If you only have tequila or vodka, you're in margarita / mule / spritz territory. Our Aperol spritz bar guide and the frozen margarita & paloma batch guide both work with whatever you already have on the shelf — no need to upgrade the spirit if the proportions are right.
The cookout food half of the equation
What you're cooking matters more than what you're pouring once the bottles are sorted. The grilling pairing matrix covers ten cookout foods — burgers, ribs, brisket, salmon, chicken thighs, shrimp, hot dogs, corn, watermelon, peach cobbler — and tells you whether bourbon, tequila, or wine pairs best for each. Burgers + Wild Turkey 101 mint juleps is the safest pairing on the list; brisket + Buffalo Trace neat is the upgrade pairing if you have it.
The "I'll plan better next year" promise
The single biggest mistake we see every Memorial Day is buyers waiting until Saturday to place a national-shipping order. The 2027 fix is simple: place the cookout order on the Monday or Tuesday before Memorial Day weekend. UPS Ground reaches every metro in the lower 48 in 5 business days; air freight is needed only if you wait past Wednesday. Bookmark the Father's Day preview guide — Father's Day is June 21, exactly four weeks out, and ordering by mid-June avoids the same scramble.
Order the smallest order that works
Today's right move is the smallest order that covers the cookout — not the biggest. Three or four bottles via courier or pickup beats nine bottles arriving Wednesday after the holiday. The Best Sellers collection is filtered for exactly the workhorse bottles that cover Memorial Day cocktails: Wild Turkey 101, Maker's 46, Buffalo Trace, Bulleit, Four Roses Small Batch, Tito's, La Marca, Casamigos Blanco. Filter by what you don't already have at home and place the order before the courier cutoff in your metro.
If you've been following the full Memorial Day series this week — Thursday Last-Call, Friday Final Call, the Saturday Order Guide, and now this Sunday Day-Of post — you've seen the shipping deadlines compress in real time. Bookmark them all for next May, and use the bourbon collection as the Tuesday-after-Memorial-Day restock for the bottles that ran out tomorrow. The Father's Day window opens immediately after Memorial Day closes, and the planning rewards anyone who orders by mid-June instead of mid-June-eve.
