Hi, I have read problems of sending wine to the US, but I want to do the reverse and send my friends in Italy, Germany and Norway some wines that I have found here in New England. The major carriers and USPS said that they will not touch the stuff from me, as I am not an authorized distributor. Any ideas about sending wine overseas?
Thanks, Brian
Yes, I had the same problem when trying to send two bottles to NZ. If you're trying to send current release wines, my advice is to go through a big retailer and bite the bullet for international freight charges. If they are rare or old bottles from your cellar, you'll probably have to contract with a retailer.
HTH Mark Lipton
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Norway? Ouch! Your friends will have to pay taxes on that - pretty heavily... Afaik it'll be about 10USD a bottle, with a maximum of 4 litres. Anders
Shipping wine or spirits to or from the US can be complicated, and especially so now that there is much increased air security. Even before present security concerns, I knew a lady who owned a wine-liquor store in the US. Many years ago she bought much wine for her personal use at auction in London. She had all sorts of problems getting the wine shipped to her in the US. Finally a wine importer that she knew arranged to import the wine for her, and he did not charge her much because her store sold many of the wines he imported.
If you ship by ground-sea, you must carefully select the right time of the year to avoid damage to the wine unless you can arrange for shipment in a temperature regulated container. Shipping by air is now very expensive, especially for an individual who can not arrange a contract with a major shipping service. As an example, 2 day air express between the central US and Vienna will cost a minimum of about US $60 for an individual, and price goes up rapidly with weight and size of the package. In addition, there may be customs to pay. At least for large contract users, the air express companies arrange so that customs papers are being processed while the shipment is still in air, and thus there usually is no delay when the shipment first enters the country, and the receiver of the package does not have to pay any duties - they have been prepaid. There are likely many companies who ship overseas just now and then. I thus suspect that you may be able to find a shipping service in a major city that can handle all of the details, for a charge of course. However even they may not wish to handle the complications of shipping wine or spirits. Shipping some food items can be just as complicated, especially for raw fresh food, due to the many different restrictions in various countries.
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