Getting Wine Back From Germany

A couple of days opened up on a planned trip to Europe while we are in Germany. I will be scheduling visits to 3-4 wineries in the Mosel during those 2 days in late July. We have not been to any of the German wine regions and are really looking forward to the visit!. A question on getting wine back to the US, hopefully someone can help with suggestions.

We will be renting a car in Frankfurt and driving to the Mosel area and staying for two nights in Trier. We would like to bring back a case or two of our favorites during our tastings(5-6 bottles each winery) and would normally bring a wine check or something similar but the problem is we are leaving Germany (Frankfurt) by train to Amsterdam, staying a few nights there then traveling to London and Ireland using a lot of mass transit. It will be an enormous hassle lugging around cases of wine from country to country.

Does anyone know a reliable shipping service, merchant etc in Frankfurt or nearby that ships wine from there to the US. The cost doesn’t really matter as the aggravation saved will be well worth it :slight_smile:.
If the Mosel was our last place visited in Europe this would not be an issue, simply fly home from Frankfurt with the wine. Unfortunately we can’t change the schedule at this point.

Thanks in advance for any help getting wine back from Germany to the US. I will be contacting our hotel in Frankfurt for any help they can provide.

Tom

I’ve had wineries organize shipping direct to me. It’s not inexpensive, but it’s an option if you are buying the lion’s share from a particular producer

Retailers can usually ship for you (we did this from Montalcino, and it cost maybe $100 or something for the case, no hassles, took maybe a month or so to arrive).

Other than that, the simplest option is just to bring them home on the flight. Fill a case shipper or two and check them as luggage. Better still, buy The Wine Check to make it easier to transport the case box from place to place.

You could ask the wineries, too, I haven’t done that, and most I’ve visited in Europe were very small family operations so I don’t think I would have asked them to do that?

Good luck with the trip. Sounds like a blast.

If you care about doing this by the book [and since this is supposed to be a Real Names Bulletin Board, and since you’ve announced your intentions for all the world to see, maybe you really ought to consider doing this by the book], then there are a lot of hoops which you have to jump through [at the federal, state, and possibly even local level], and in many jurisdictions, it would be very easy to become a felon [at least on paper] if you hadn’t dotted all the I’s and crossed all the T’s in your various transactions.

In fact, just knowing which hoops to jump through gives you a huge competitive advantage over the people who haven’t bothered to educate themselves about the hoops and the jumping.

Economists call this sort of forbidden knowledge an “Artificial Barrier to Entry”.

Which is kind of ironic, considering that you’re trying to figure out how you can get your Riesling to enter the country.

Thanks Chris, a retailer might be an option. Here is why taking a couple cases back as luggage won’t work. Taking a train back from Frankfurt to Amsterdam, Amsterdam Station to hotel, hotel to Amsterdam Station to airport. Heathrow underground to hotel. I could keep on going as there are other hotels in England and Ireland. Lugging cases of wine (along with luggage) just won’t work.

In 2018 there must be a RELIABLE way to get wine back from Frankfurt to the US. Been searching around, I just need to find it :slight_smile:.

Tom

Of course would be doing this “by the book”. I don’t care what tariffs, duties, taxes, etc I have to pay nor do I care what the amount is. Only looking at this from a convenience angle, its not really feasible lugging around a case or two of wine around Europe. As I had mentioned earlier, if Frankfurt was our last stop there would be no problem.

Tom

Your problem is that while a case or two of wine is an inconvenience for you, it wouldn’t even show up on the radar of most of the people who know how to do this stuff “By the Book”.

I imagine that those people wouldn’t be much interested in anything less than about a pallet, and they’d probably be more interested in something like a quarter of a container [which would be many thousands of bottles of wine - I have a vague recollection that a container holds something like 1000 to 5000 cases of wine?].

I suppose it’s possible that there’s someone offering a service whereby they accumulate thousands of Americans’ summer vacation wine purchases in Europe, and hold those purchases in cold storage, until about November 1st [when it’s relatively safe to ship again], and then they ship several containers to the USA, and finally they pull their hair out & knock their heads against a wall, trying to get the wines legally into each state [which is going to be darned near impossible in the states where the wine has to pass through both a distributor AND an unaffiliated retailer before it can be handed over to a consumer, so whoever knows how to do this “By the Book” in such a state has to have one very good friend who is a distributor in that state, and a second very good friend who is a retailer in that state].

Again, though, your luck here is going to vary dramatically depending upon your place of residence.

If you were in Washington, DC [a direct import jurisdiction for retailers], then you would probably have vastly better luck at this, than, say, in Utah [which is a felony state].

Can you pay your import duty in fiat electrons? Asking for a friend.

My guess is that most of the people offering a “By the Book” service like this would be using a jurisdiction such as Washington DC, where it’s understood that it’s the client’s responsibility to drive down from Philly & collect the wines & take them back up to Pennsylvania and thereby become an as-yet-un-indicted ETOH smuggler.

PS: If you can tell me the difference between the fiat electrons invented by a Central Bank versus the fiat electrons invented by crypto-currency miners, then I’m all ears.

I think fiat electrons just work for importing Italian wines. You probably need Mercedes electrons for German riesling.

Tom - Be sure to ask yourself if it’s worth the hassle. If the wine is available here, it may be hard to justify the shipping costs and the trouble. It’s a lot easier to justify if it’s, say, Burgundy or Barolo that goes for $100+ here and can be had there for half in Europe. If it’s a riesling that retails here for $50, not so much.

On the other hand, there are lots of dry rieslings and reds (in other areas, not the Mosel) that you can’t get here. The novelty may make it worthwhile.

I usually plan my trips so I drive directly from a wine area to my departure airport, not trains at the end!

Yea, I hear you John. Unfortunately this three day trip to the Mosel actually came up suddenly as friends could not meet us elsewhere so we decided to visit Wine country in the middle of the trip.

Every other wine centric trip we have taken has always ended with a trip to the airport.

Tom

The good news is that I think most of the best Mosel sweet riesling producers are imported to the US.

I’ve never had a problem in Germany (or Italy) explaining that I can’t buy because of my later travels, and that I know the wines in the US market.

You could consider contacting Rieslinghaus (in Bernkastel-Kues, of course) and asking whether they could ship for you. As they have a great selection of wines from many top producers (mostly Mosel) at great prices it is likely that a lot of the wines you taste on your trip can be found there (plus some older vintages!). While it might feel nicer to buy directly from the winery the producers surely appreciate it just as much if you say that you will buy from Rieslinghaus.

Tom – Another thought. You might consider shipping/mailing the wine to wherever you’ll be immediately before returning home, and then checking the wine with you on the return flight. Shipping within Europe is often quite cheap, and if it’s only a couple of cases, US customs won’t have a problem (provided you clear customs someplace other than Texas or another state where the customs enforces local state laws on liquor).

Thanks for the suggestion, Rieslinghaus will be on our list of places to visit.

John, we think alike. Already have contacted our departure hotel to discuss the possibility of sending wine in advance of our visit.

Tom

Unless you want real rarities, BA/TBAs or auction wines it sounds more hassle than its worth to bring wine back.

Das Weinhaus in Trier may also be worth a look.

I agree—this is the most convenient, and likely the cheapest option. Reputable hotels will absolutely do this kind of thing.

I suspect they won’t ship to the U.K. maybe the Netherlands or Ireland. Shipping wine within the EU is more complex than it should be.