The disparity between the sales value and volume totals can be attributed to the varying popularity of differing bottle sizes of each brand. Allen’s and Tito’s each sell more 1.75-liter bottles — often called “half-gallons” — than they do any of their smaller sizes.

Fireball’s runaway best seller is the 50-milliliter bottle, also called a “nip.” It sold 2.8 million nip bottles in Maine last year, pulling in $3.6 million in sales for that bottle size alone.

Fireball’s sales skyrocketed in Maine after its 2007 rebranding and a subsequent aggressive promotion effort that started in 2010. In 2013, Fireball’s total statewide sales were $770,000 but more than doubled in 2014 and again the following year. In 2016 and again in 2017, Fireball’s Maine sales increased by more than 50 percent.

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When Fireball’s sales in Maine hit $8.3 million in 2017, it had become the second-most popular brand of liquor in the state, having shot past all other brands except Allen’s. Fireball is owned by Louisiana-based Sazerac Co. and bottled regionally in Lewiston by subsidiary Boston Brands of Maine.

In recent years Tito’s Handmade Vodka, owned by Texas-based Fifth Generation Inc., also has exploded in popularity in Maine and elsewhere. In 2018 it ranked third in sales in the state at $9.2 million, behind Allen’s $9.6 million and Fireball’s $10.1 million sales totals. Since 2013, when its statewide sales totaled $273,189, Tito’s revenue in Maine has increased by nearly 4,200 percent.

Though it continues to sell well in Maine, Allen’s has much smaller sales elsewhere in New England and virtually none outside the region. Its peak sales year was 2009, when $12.9 million of it sold in Maine. In 2018, for the first time since at least 2004, its sales in Maine dipped below $10 million.

Sales data in the state prior to 2004 are unavailable, though an M.S. Walker official has said Allen’s dominance in the Maine market stretches back to the early 1980s.

Statewide, total liquor sales last year rose 5.8 percent to reach $199.5 million. Maine is one of 17 states that control alcohol sales within their border, controlling which spirits can be sold and their prices.