Travelling With Wine
So you went and bought a number of bottles while visiting wineries and now you have to try and get them home in one piece… No worries, here’s how to do that without losing a drop.
The most important thing about bringing wine back home from your trip is, of course, to make sure the bottles won’t break during the process. Luckily we have a selection of boxes and protectors in our wine shop here at the Torres Visitors’ Centre.
A hard suitcase is the best choice for obvious reasons but if you don’t have one, no need to run out the door to buy one just yet – unless you want it for your future trips, we have a solution for that, too! We`ve got shock resistant suitcases for three bottles that you can check in.
Home Made Solutions
If you have more bottles than protectors, there are a couple of “home remedies”:
- You can put the bottle in the long sleeve of an old shirt (that could be thrown away in case of a red wine coloured accident) and wrap the shirt around it. Secure with a plastic bag. In the place of a shirt sleeve you can use old newspaper. If you choose to use this method, be prepared for unpleasant surprises. Just in case of bottle breakage, I would only use it if I could put my clothes and shoes into another bag, and then fill the suitcase with the wine bottles with stuff that could be thrown away later…
- You have to of course take into account the weight limitations of the airline you’re travelling with; they have the information on their web pages. If you exceed the limit, they might make you pay extra, so you probably won’t want to risk it.
And to make sure you won’t have to pay extra for extra liters, before boarding the plane you should check how many bottles you can bring with you to specific countries. The information is usually available on your government web pages, for example US:https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/190/~/bringing-alcohol-(including-homemade-wine)-to-the-u.s.-for-personal-use
- If I’m visiting wine countries, I pack my clothes and shoes in a cabin bag and check in an empty hard suitcase (with maybe a couple of old towels) to bring back any liquid treasures I happen to find.
- Within the EU it’s easy, since if you’re bringing the wines for your own consumption there are no limits:https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/eu-countries/
The Bottle Shock Phenomenon
After the trip you should give the bottles some TLC and let them rest a while. There’s a phenomenon called bottle shock – wine doesn’t like to travel. Once you reach home, -If you have the patience-, lay the bottles down in a dark space, preferably in lower temperature, imitating cellar conditions as much as possible. If you open the bottles right away, you might find the wine has a little muted taste, it’s a little “off”.
The movement and possible temperature changes during the trip can have this negative effect on wine, especially older vintages, but if you can spare a couple of days to a couple of weeks (in the case of very old vintages) you should be good to go.
Cheers!