I shipped wine from Italy to London without a problem some years back.
That may be true. It probably wasn’t technically permissible though and your wine could have been held in customs.
As a follow-up to my above comment, I will say that using a 6-pack or 12-pack shipper, it’s not the worst thing in the world to put the box of wine on top of your hard-sided, 4-wheeled luggage and drag it around, assuming you have that kind of luggage. I dragged two cases of wine around (my travel partner helped with one of them) for over a week and we survived just fine.
I’ve carried a fair amount of wine back and forth from Europe and, interestingly, never been asked to pay any duty going either direction. I always declare it, but a string of circumstances (one time the payment machine was broken, once they couldn’t find the person who know how to calculate the tax, one guy just didn’t want to be bothered, etc.) always ended up with “sorry for the delay, thanks for letting us know, have a nice day 
”
The only hitch I’ve ever had is that I bought some spirits in London and asked the hotel to ship it to the US for me. They did not know what was in the box, decided to open it to check, and then let me know that they could not ship it. They did ship it to my office in Dublin, however, and somebody hand-carried it back for me from Dublin and had no issues when they declared it (I think it was two 500s of gin).
In short, I’d still ask about shipping the wine to your final hotel, even if that hotel is in the UK. My guess is that you’ll be fine for now (although perhaps not so once Brexit takes effect).
I did the middle Mosel last year and one wine I enjoyed was not available anywhere in the states. I contacted the producer and they were able to ship a case to me for 70 euro. It took about a month to get it, but DHL handled all of the hassle in getting stateside, then FedEx brought it to my door.
One note, with this particular winery I had to do everything via wire transfer, as they mentioned they couldn’t accept a credit card unless I was on premises.
Also beware: Some growers do not accept credit cards! While wine tasting in Rheinhessen last month the grower would only accept cash or an “EC chip card”, basically a debit pin card tied to an EU bank account.
Legally, it has to go through an importer licensed to handle wines. I wonder if they did that. Did it have importer stickers applied? That would be one clue.
That’s scary! I thought that now that US credit and debit cards have chips that a lot of these issues would go away. But I remember that the last time I was in Germany, in 2006, credit cards were not as widely accepted as elsewhere. (Harrod’s wine department demanded my passport for a credit card purchase ~10 years ago, before our cards had chips.) Germany has a very fragmented banking industry (lots of small local and regional banks and credit unions), so perhaps the payment networks aren’t all linked to the global system.
In Burgundy, this is no longer necessary. I get wines shipped to me by a company called Cote D’Or Imports that ships to the US for most wineries and wine stores in the area. If they pick up the wine from the store/winery directly, no VAT. Often, shipping is less than VAT. Shipping rate varies by, among other things, how much you have shipped - there are quantity discounts.
Is there a place like this in Germany?
Yes, there was a store in the middle of Nuits St. Georges that did that. I used them back in 2000. It worked smoothly. I think they used Ziegler, the big trans-Atlantic wine shipping company.
2 things that I have noted in my trips over the past two years: Some small merchants are credit card phobic, due to fees. And despite using the chip reader at merchants in Germany and the Netherlands, I would invariably have to sign the receipt instead giving my pin.
Thanks for everyone’s thoughts and suggestions, Several options to investigate and in a couple of months will report back on exactly what we wound up doing.
Tom
It seems like you have a good plan, but just for comparison: I just did a trip like this and found everything I wanted back in the USA. Well, except for ‘17s which haven’t shipped yet . Also some smaller producers have either nothing to sell, or limited availability. One nice thing about tasting at Molitor is that everything on their basic list is available for sale.
So I just bought a few bottles to drink on my trip or to give as gifts along the way.
Thanks Rich, have really enjoyed your Blog Posts on the area.
Tom