Europe's wine shops are tempting — but each extra bottle adds weight (and a small duty tax once home). Even if you've got a box for your bottles, swaddle it snugly in your clothes before checking your luggage. By Ruth Arista and Rick Steves Wine lovers wandering through Europe face a continual dilemma: Savor the memories or haul a few favorite bottles home? Despite the global-goods-on-demand world we live in today, your neighborhood wine shop can’t always track down the wine you enjoyed at that Parisian café or Spanish tapas bar. Some wineries only sell their wine within their country, which makes it tempting to bring a few bottles home. The downside, of course, is the schlepping — the scary prospect of a bottle breaking in your suitcase or the weight of the box dragging you down as you trudge through the airport. And there’s the chance that the wine won’t taste quite as exquisite when you’re sipping it in your kitchen as it did on that piazza in Siena.

You might be better off seeing wine like art — something to be enjoyed, marveled at, and remembered. Before you purchase a bottle to carry home, ask the server whether the wine is exported to your home state. Or take a picture of the label with your phone — you can even email it to your hometown wine shop to find out if they can have the wine waiting for you when you return. But if you can’t resist bringing wine home, keep these tips in mind. Pack softly and carry a hard suitcase. Per TSA regulations, if you purchase liquor from a duty-free shop and it’s able to be screened (i.e., not in an opaque, metallic, or ceramic bottle) and is in a secure, tamper-evident bag (called an STEB), you can transport it in your carry-on. If not, you’ll have to pack it carefully in checked luggage. This works most of the time if the bottles are thickly padded with clothing in a hard-sided suitcase (though bottles can still break); they’ll also have to endure the extreme cold (or heat) of the cargo hold.

If you’re traveling with a partner, divide the bottles among your bags (each bottle of wine weighs about three pounds, so five bottles means 15 extra pounds). Bring a spare fold-up tote bag or duffle for your clothes and check it so that you can bring the wine in a carry-on bag.the best sweet red wine brandIf you bring back more than one liter, customs regulations require you to pay duty tax based on the percent of alcohol (generally $1–2 per liter for wine). best wine for 10 dollarsCouples get away with three standard 750 ml bottles, adding up to 2¼ liters. best wine marketing booksThere’s also a small federal excise tax.best wine for thanksgiving meal

Be up front if you’re over the limit. You may even benefit — sometimes the special customs lines move faster than the nothing-to-declare ones. If your wine is for personal use, the agents might not even tax you. red wine best storageIt won’t happen all the time, but many wine-obsessed travelers report that this can be the case.how early can you buy wine in texas Ruth Arista and her husband David own Arista Wine Cellars, a wine shop in Edmonds, Wash. Be sure to check your state’s regulations regarding bringing alcohol into the US, as state laws and regulations can vary.top 10 wine brands in india To ship wine from Tuscany to distant countries such as the States, Australia or New Zealand is quite easy but might not make economic sense. best wine places in usa

In the first place, bulk wholesalers are often able to bring wine to market outside Italy for the same price or even less than what it costs at the vineyard. This is because of the substantial discounts they obtain by buying in large quantities. best affordable red wine 2013However, you might find a wine you love the taste of that is not going to be available in your home country or home area. Your options include getting the winery to ship a case for you - some but not all do this. Post offices in wine-producing areas sell special wine cartons, allowing you to handle everything by yourself. If you pack it well, putting wine in your checked baggage is an option - maybe each one well wrapped in plastic in case it breaks. Of course, currently, carrying bottles of wine onto the plane is not an option - no liquids allowed. One day this ridiculous rule will disappear and bringing home a few bottles in your hand luggage will once again the the cheapest and safest method of importing small quantities of wine.

Visitors within train distance are not limited - yet another reason to travel by train. Some wineries are more experienced than others in shipping wine. Terre di Melazzano, a producer of good Chianti Classico, will ship cases or even whole pallets of wine for you. Author: Anna Maria BaldiniOooh... a juicy one. This answer is going to deal largely with a consumer oriented approach. As a wholesaler/re-seller/winery with volume, we have some more options that include refrigerated, consolidated shipping. But those options are expensive and often times don't mitigate a lot of the risks outlined below. If you have questions specifically related to shipping as a winery, I can answer those too. But if you're a normal person, and you want to get a package of wine shipped from Point A to Point B, this is what you need to read.The best methods for shipping wine are weather/season/destination/distance dependent. Wine is extremely temperature sensitive, and that must be accounted for in the shipping process.

There is no way around this. Take the risks of shipping wine very seriously: heat damage is permanent and it makes me, the winery, look bad, even if it was your fault that it got heat damaged.If you want an easy answer to remember that will always work just fine no matter where in the world the package is coming from or going to and when, and you don't mind forking over cash, then the answer is packed safely in recycled cardboard pulp shipping, and shipped FedEx overnight Priority delivery with signature.But let's go over each facet of this and you'll see that you don't always need to fork over the ridiculous overnight fee.Recycled pulp wine shippers are by far the most economically and environmentally friendly way to ship wine. They're not expensive, they're reusable, and they do a very good job. So do the plastic air bubble ones, too, but those are expensive and not entirely designed for parcel shipping. These are not totally bomb-proof, but unless your FedEx guy Ace Venturas this package down the hall, you should be just fine.

What not to do, FedEx guy. You want to use FedEx. I know, I know, the UPS guy is friendlier, and he gives my dog treats. But there is a significant difference in the way they treat signature packages. UPS will often leave signature-required alcohol packages on a front doorstep or stoop when the package recipient is not home. This is illegal, but they figure they're doing the recipient and the shipper a favor. Newsflash: They're not doing anyone a favor except themselves. Because when wine sits outside, even on a mild day, it's probably getting exposed to direct heat, direct sunlight, direct cold, direct snow, direct dog territory marking, etc. This is why you ask for signature, so that the package will not get left out exposed to the elements. UPS drivers are okay with breaking the law with this because if they were to get caught, UPS takes the hit, not the individual driver. FedEx, however, has a different type of contract with their drivers where the driver is responsible for these kinds of infractions.

because of that, FedEx drivers don't leave packages that require signature out and about just because they're friendly with the recipient. Now, if you're a private party shipping to another private party, I'm not sure whether or not you can get the package tagged as alcohol. If you can, this is a good thing, because that is when they become 100% strict about not leaving the package on a doorstep.Similarly, you want to try to ship to a business address, so that you know the person or a co-worker will be there to accept the package and keep it from having to sit on the delivery truck the rest of the day or another whole day for a second delivery attempt. The only time to ship to a residential address is if you know the person will be there for sure, or in the completely trans-continental situation I laid below.If you have a strong preference for UPS, though, and you're shipping to a business address, you're probably fine seeing what Brown can do for you.If this is a pretty irreplaceable bottle of wine, then you probably want to get insurance, too.

But, regardless, use this process of elimination to see exactly what method of shipping will work while mitigating as much risk as possible for your money. Once again, though, if you have the dollars to just ship priority overnight every time, that is the safest bet. You don't have to do that to have 99% good results, though. See below:If it's summer anywhere along your shipping route from origin to destination, or even a particularly warm spring or fall, you do not want to ship ground.If it's straight up hot anywhere along your shipping route, you want to ship some form of Express.If it's hot everywhere on your shipping route, you want overnight shipping.If it's hot or even really warm at your shipping destination, and you're already shipping overnight, you want to get priority delivery so that the package spends as little time in the non-temperature controlled delivery vehicle as possible.But, if the temperature and weather at your shipping origin and shipping destination are mild, but the route in between currently isn't mild, then you can ship 3 Day Express Saver.If the temperature and weather at origin, destination, and the rail route in between is all mild, then you can ship Ground, and save a whole lot of money.

REALLY IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDLESS OF SHIPPING METHOD:Depending on estimated in-transit time, you want to avoid the package being at the origin distribution center or the destination distribution center over the weekend. A lot of shipping warehouses are not air conditioned over the weekend. Even worse: If the package was loaded onto the truck before the weekend was over, but the truck didn't make it back out again, then it's sitting in a wonderfully warm little oven all weekend. You should time your shipping so that the package is delivered before a weekend, or is in cross country transit over a weekend. This is another reason to pick FedEx... they do residential delivery on Saturdays, so you get an extra day of the week to get a residential package delivered, if that's you're only shipping option. The only time this becomes a concern is if you're going completely trans-continental on FedEx Ground. A good portion of the east coast is still Friday deliver from Monday shipping in California, but some is Saturday/Monday deliver from Monday shipping.

If this is the case, you might just want to pony up and pay for 3 Day Express Saver to make sure it's delivered by Friday, or make sure they'll be at their residence on Saturday to accept the package. Remember that if the Saturday delivery gets missed, the package will sit ON the truck over Sunday until Monday.On the other hand, if you are shipping express, even 3 Day, you want to avoid the package having to lie around anywhere over the weekend (even in temp controlled Express warehouses). Just wait till Monday to ship. In general, the way you should think about it is this: How can I limit the time exposed to non-temperature controlled space (or any conditions outside of 40-72 degrees F) as much as possible for my money?Several years ago I had many cases of wine shipped from California to Massachusetts with the help of Cellar Advisors. They did a great job -- shipped in a temperature-controlled truck to a temperature-controlled warehouse where I picked them up.It appears that they have changed names or been bought out -- the new name is Domaine Storage, but their website says they still offer shipping services.