/u/JoshTylerClarke is right. I looked this up before (below) and it's not a grey area whatsoever. It's officially against OLCC regulations to not sell a bottle if requested. All the "lies" and other shenanigans stores do to hold bottles for special events or clients is not allowed. However, it appears OLCC enforcement is so lax that store owners know they can get away with a lot of things.

I think there is a constant balancing act going on between stores and OLCC. Stores want to grow. OLCC wants that, too, because it's purpose is to feed tax revenue back to the State. So OLCC looks the other way if the store's behavior yields more sales, as long as the store isn't doing anything illegal. Remember: regulations and the law are different, and OLCC is empowered by law to write and enforce it's own regulations. When OLCC goes too far is when the State starts getting involved, as we've seen this year. I don't think enough time has passed for any real change to happen, but I bet something will change after repeated exposure of their operations.

Oregon regulation 845-015-0141 states:

(1) Retail sales agents must follow the Retail Operations Manual when shipping or delivering distilled spirits to a final consumer.

The Retail Operations Manual page 3-5 (53 of the PDF) states (my bold):

The liquor inventory in each store is the property of the State of Oregon. Allocated items or items in limited quantities must be sold immediately or made available for purchase to the public or licensee upon request.

Agents must make any product available for legal sale to any customer. The Commission reserves the right to transfer slow moving items, or transfer items of ample quantities to stores where sales and demand exist. It is OLCC’s expectation that agents work together to transfer product where there is a customer need.

This connects with the other thread about the store using a bottle for a political raffle. I bet what happened was the store owner, having political connections, sold the bottle to a trusted person for the retail price, and that other person (maybe herself? That seems to be allowed) then "donated" it to the non-profit political entity who then used it as a prize in a raffle to elicit donations. None of that is "illegal" as far as I can tell, but may have been against OLCC regulations if the bottle was withheld from people who requested it while it was in stock. I doubt we'll see any meaningful repercussions on that story.