In my experience, it can save you a lot of money, particularly if you have an import service like Domaine Storage offers their clients. Otherwise the shipping prices I’ve been quoted by UK merchants are really high, like $250 for a case. But if it’s high end wine that’s more than $25 cheaper per bottle in the UK, it can be worth it. I think a lot of people do this for Bordeaux futures, I sometimes buy grower champagne from there.
In my experience, buying and shipping from Italy is where you can really save a lot of money.
I have not purchased wine from London, but I have from France. When I have wine shipped from there, I don’t to pay VAT. This effectively makes shipping costs quite low, depending on the wines you are buying. Is there something similar buying out of England?
I just ordered, one sixer from a retailer and one from a winery. Put in my address, paid, it was just like ordering domestically just more expensive shipping.
If there are any other issues, I’m blissfully unaware of them.
I’ve had wine shipped from the UK, France, and Italy, always with VAT deducted from the invoice (no refund process I have to go through after the fact). It’s been seamless every time and led to great deals. The only thing you might have to watch out for is the DHL delivery person’s unfamiliarity with delivering to a commercial facility like Domaine Storage in DC. But their online tracking and customer support is precise and top notch. I’m buying less from the UK than I was last year (exchange rate) but Italy often and France to a lesser extent.
Did it arrive in good condition? Was it refrigerated shipping? I’ve been reading horror stories about shipping and wine sitting in warehouses, like the one linked below.
I hear you. Some of us are forced into that blasphemous behavior by the fact that we need to try some producers to know what we want to store, and don’t have 20 or 40 years of wine sitting in a cellar. I have some I bought blindly and hope I don’t regret it in 2036 or 2046.
We will only ship parcels between late October and March.
The in house custom’s clearance at DHL/Fed Ex/UPS is extremely inefficient and the packages often sit around for days waiting for the agent to clear the shipment.
