Currently living between NYC and Europe (Belgium more specifically). I would like to bring a few bottles of wine from NYC to Belgium. Nothing super expensive or valuable (everything in the $50-$250 range), approximately 20 bottles. Is there a way to ship these with something like DHL or UPS? 20 bottles is a bit much to carry in my luggage unfortunately. I recently read private individuals are not allowed to ship wine here in the States?
Any help is appreciated to get these bottles to Europe so I can share some good American wines with my European friends
Ok, so travelling with 2 people I could bring 10 bottles free of charge (the most expensive ones) and then pay a dollar or 2 of excise duty per remaining bottle + 21% VAT on those remaining bottles. Sounds like this will be way cheaper than trying to ship with DHL.
Don’t know what euro customs is like, but if you bring excess wine in here to the U.S., he duty is so small they don’t want to bother, and typically just wave you through. My experience with customs in most european entry points is that they are barely paying attention, sometimes not even anyone there lol.
If you ever need to ship more in the future, if maybe worth asking Nick Terry at CID. I have only used them for Europe to the US. But I believe he does the reverse route too.
Might be worth investing in an actual wine suitcase, which will protect the wine well, expect if you’re going to be doing this regularly, can be used as a regular suitcase later if you like.
I do the same thing 1-2x a year to our house in Italy. Never had a question from Italian customs, and as suggested, invest in a Vingardevalise or something equivalent. Just may take you a couple of trips to get that amount over there.
If you carry it in your suitcase I doubt there will be any problem at all.
I have travelled back from the US to the UK (when it was part of the EU) and to Spain with 12 bottles in my two suitcases and I wasn’t even inspected.
After Brexit, however, bringing wine from the UK into Spain became more complicated, especially right after Brexit when no one had a clue of the administrative measures to be followed after the exit.
Eventually it has been figured out and in-bond wine simply does not pay duty nor VAT when retrieved from the UK. Once it reaches Europe you must present the invoice and you pay VAT on the actual purchase price depending on which country is the final destination.
You would also probably have to fill up a declaration form (or several) stating that the wine is for personal consumption and perhaps some of the characteristics of the wine (I had to state whether the wines had sulphites or not).
Just curious if anyone has benchmark or ballpark cost for this. Say NY → LON. Curious what the rate is per bottle 100 bottles (or I dunno per 10 cases) and the timeframe?
