Bringing your wine home

Appears in

Published 2010

Before you get carried away and buy a year’s supply of wine, you should consider how you will transport the wine back home:

If you are travelling by car, keep your wine as cool and still as possible. Pack the wine in boxes (usually available for free from the vendor) and stack tightly. Avoid parking your car in direct sunlight for an extended period, as this can damage your wine.
Taking the channel tunnel to France is a good way to buy wine. There are no restrictions on the quantity of wine British residents can import from Europe, so as long as the wine is solely for personal consumption you can really stock up.
Shipping wine to different countries within Europe can be quite difficult and costly.
Sending wine - for example, from South Africa or California to the UK - is certainly possible, but can be fairly expensive. Think carefully whether the savings on the wine purchase justify the cost of transportation - a specialist wine merchant in your area might already stock the wine.
If you are travelling by plane, it is a simple matter to carry a few bottles, carefully wrapped, in your hand luggage, however, airlines are increasingly enforcing limits for hand luggage. It is extremely risky to put bottles in checked luggage, as they may break as a result of rough handling or changes in air pressure. Airlines will accept cases of wine as checked luggage, but it is your responsibility to pack the wine carefully and safely. Wine transported in this way will be considered as part of your weight allowance, so it is easy to incur excess baggage charges.