RICHMOND — After a series of problems in fairly distributing a limited number of coveted bottles of liquor, the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority announced Tuesday it will implement a more random system to determine when and where rare products end up on store shelves.

The changes mean customers will have to rely more on luck when finding sought-after products at ABC stores across the state, and customers will only be allowed to purchase one bottle per day, which will be available in limited quantities.

The liquor authority said it will “no longer” inform customers when these products will be available. Inventory data for limited-availability products will not be accessible on the ABC website, and store employees will not be allowed to provide information over the phone about whether they are authorized to sell limited-availability products in their store.

“We know that customers in all regions of the Commonwealth want to have an equal opportunity to get these coveted spirits,” ABC said in an announcement about the change. “By selling products in random locations, on random dates and at random times, we limit the opportunities for individuals or groups to abuse the system.”

The changes come two years after a scandal in which an ABC employee and a business partner were caught selling bourbon collectors inside information about where ABC was sending hard-to-find bottles. Both men pleaded guilty to computer trespass but avoided prison time for their convictions on that charge.

Bourbon enthusiasts were also outraged last year after they discovered clear statistical anomalies in the way ABC conducted its random rare bottle lotteries. At the time, ABC officials said a “sorting error in Excel” resulted in some lottery entrants winning multiple bottles, even though the mathematical probability of doing so would have been very high in a truly random system.

ABC officials said they would continue to run online lotteries for the rarest bottles, such as Pappy Van Winkle, and “where appropriate” send text alerts for some limited-edition releases.

The agency said it decided not to release products with limited availability on a particular day because in the past some shoppers camped outside stores to be the first to be able to buy these products.

ABC will not put rare bottles on shelves immediately after they arrive in stores, the agency said, because customers could then “follow the delivery trucks to individual stores and purchase bottles along the delivery trucks’ route.”

ABC said it could not impose a national one-bottle limit on customers buying rare products because the agency only reads buyers’ IDs to verify their age and does not collect data on how much alcohol individual customers buy.

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