Where does wine fit into your vacations?

How does wine fit into your (non wine-related) vacations?

  • Vacation for me means time to open more bottles and to spend more time enjoying them than normal
  • I drink wine in about the same amount and frequency on vacation as compared to normal
  • I still enjoy wine on vacation, but in lesser amounts than I enjoy normally
  • I mostly take a break from wine when I’m on vacation and focus on other things and other beverages
  • I would like to have as much or more wine as normal on vacation, but because of the hassle or cost of having good wine and stemware on vacation, or because of my opinions about things like travel shock or enjoying wines in different weather, I usually do not have it as much

0 voters

When you travel on vacations that are not wine-related (e.g. excluding your vacations to Burgundy, Napa, Piemonte, or your vacations that are to attend wine events), what role does wine play in it?

For me, I bring wine almost everywhere I go, usually using my trusty Wine Check. Part of what I look forward to on vacation is more wine, and more time to relax and enjoy good wine. I took the family to Cabo last week for spring break, and we brought a case of wine in the Wine Check. I love sitting on the patio of our hotel room in the early evening, watching the waves crash, enjoying a great bottle, then having a good bottle to bring to dinner (every restaurant we went to was cool about bringing wine - some had $15-25 corkage, some had corkage but waived it, some had no charge - I’m not really much concerned with saving money or not, but mostly just happy to be drinking wines that I love with my dinner).

We also bring some good-but-not-exceptional glasses along, which is a bit of a hassle, but worth doing, since drinking good wines out of crappy hotel or condo wine glasses is kind of a downer.

I have 100% confidence for myself after many years of doing this on almost every trip that “travel shock” is a complete non-issue in this context, other than that I wouldn’t bring an old Barolo or something like that along because the fine sediment would get too stirred up. But I know others perceive it differently.

Anyway, I often read on here that people like to use vacations to get away from wine, or to drink margaritas and pina coladas, and so forth, or that they don’t want to be bothered having to travel with and/or source good wines. So I’m curious to see how it breaks down, especially with summer vacation season on the horizon. Answer the poll, but better still please elaborate in explanation. No right or wrong answers, but I’m just interested to share some thoughts and perspectives on it.

Largely I’m in the same boat with you, Chris. Wine comes with us on almost every trip, and certainly when traveling to places where it is more difficult or more expensive to obtain acceptable bottles. We have also brought glasses with us, or bought them upon arrival. At an apartment we often rent in Japan, the owners keep the Riedel glasses purchased on a past trip for us, and put them in the apartment now when we return. We’ve even used our own stems on planes!

The only thing I disagree about it the travel shock. As bottle upon bottle of older champagne in particular has disappointed us after traveling, we no longer bring anything with significant age on our trips. While I’ve had some that did just fine, the risk is too great for us. We have plenty of youthful or middle-aged wines without much sediment, such as Rieslings, white burgs, NV champagne, “lesser” Northern Piedmont, 1er cru red burgs etc. that make us very happy and don’t require coddling.

An additional pleasure of this practice is the friends we have made when bringing wine to restaurants abroad. Chefs who aren’t used to such things, but get very interested when they see what we’ve brought, patrons at other tables with whom we’ve shared, hotel staff who are intrigued when we request good glassware brought to the room. It’s a conversation starter and a connector. For instance, we are bringing some old Rieslings to particular restaurant in Kyoto on our upcoming trip because we found out last trip that the chef loves them. He even offered to close down the restaurant so we could all drink together!

I do not tend to drink wine every night at home. But, on vacation, we tend to be eating out so drink more wine. It really depends on what we are doing. If we are on a cruise, we generally have wine with dinner every night (mine to the extent allowed). If we are visiting relatives, probably less wine than when we are at home because they do not drink wine.

I bring wine with me on vacation sometimes, but never glasses and usually do not bring wine with me.

What’s this “vacation” of which you speak?

We often bring 6 or more bottles with us on our annual Spring Training Pilgrimage. There are friends & family, some ITB and some civilian, who we visit each March in Florida. We enjoy dining & sharing bottles from our cellar and theirs.

Almost not at all. I don’t like lugging bottles with us and Arnold can’t drink anything above a certain alcohol percentage. So we’ll generally only order wine at a restaurant if they have a good German selection.

Wine Check - we own two - is a good thing. We drink a bottle or so each night on vacation or not (doctor’s orders - no kidding).

Mostly bring to restaurants - so do not bring stemware.

We’ve found that, in general, we drink less wine on vacation. Mostly it’s a function of traveling to areas where either 1.) good wine is scarce or 2.) good wine is insanely overpriced. I haven’t found the desire to hassle with bringing my own wine, in most cases. We usually end up drinking more beer and cocktails and less wine.

I’m not sure I’d consider them a “vacation,” but family holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving are times when I really seem to deviate from my normal consumption. We don’t host most holidays, but drive to family. In those cases, I’m almost always both drinking more great wine than normal and taking a lot of good stuff with me to share.

I don’t bring wine with me on vacation, but I do quickly find out where the good shops are at my destination.

When we went to Saint Martin in Feb, I called the hotel and asked about local wine shops, and they told me they sell wine from the hotel lobby. When we got there, I was thrilled to see a list of decent priced Champagne and Rose from Provence. It was great!

We got to Manhattan last month and as our taxi was pulling up the the hotel, we passed a decent looking wine shop, I immediately told my wife “go check in, I’ll get the wine” .

I tend to leave my fetish at home.

If I insisted on dragging my own wine on a trip, then all I would be doing is the same old thing…in a different location.

I like to try wines off the list in new areas, have more fun with cocktails, etc. without having to worry about slogging wine around.

I like the food in my pantry, but I don’t need to take it on trips. [cheers.gif]

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That being said, I will also go and visit friends/family with wine drinking as the planned pastime, and then we will take wine from point A to point B. So, I take wine only if there is a purposeful event planned.

I just want to point out that bringing my own wine in no way precludes trying wines off the list or having fun with cocktails. Can sample local wares as well as have a nice stash in the apartment/hotel. Maybe we just drink more than everyone else…[cheers.gif]

These two paras describe me as well. On first, the flexibility of home is welcomed - I can open a good bottle and save some, or maybe others drink it, whereas when traveling, carry-out rules vary (and aren’t always practical in hotels, etc.)

For in-state trips, I will bring wine. Flying somewhere, usually not, but if I am flying, we’re probably going somewhere nice and you can usually find something local that tickles your fancy.

I chose the last option as it is the closest, but we actually drink more on vacation we just don’t bring it:
Typically if it is a weekend getaway we don’t bring wine, we just go with the flow as we are likely to be moving pretty fast and I can’t count on ‘the right time’ to open a bottle and take time with it. A trip somewhere to see friends and we will take wine, as slowdown and sharing is what makes it special for these occasions. With a trip overseas, for us a lot of the fun is experiencing the food and drink of that culture … and more than likely will end up bringing wine back.

On longer trips, two of these go with us. If we are headed to a wine region, we only carry a few bottles outbound with us. The rest of the space in the cases is filled with odds and ends that either get tossed or shifted into our suitcase when we return with two suitcases full of wine.

Recently returned with two full cases, one with wines from Uruguay, the other with wines from Mendoza.

http://www.vingardevalise.com/

Since you cannot bring liquids through TSA checkpoints, this means no wine either coming or going. Sounds like the majority of you don’t mind paying baggage fees, but at $50+ per bag, I can buy wine wherever I am and I hate being gouged for services that used to be free.

Not everyone pays a per-bag fee – I took Southwest to Cabo so no bag fees, and many have premiere status that avoids the fees.

But if I have to pay $30 or $50 to bring a case of wine for a week, it’s a lot less than I’ll pay to buy a week’s worth of good wines to drink wherever I’m going, not to mention sparing me the time and effort of finding wine shops to go buy wines. And with the Wine Check, you just toss the styro shipping box, fold the Wine Check into your suitcase, and don’t have to pay a baggage fee on the return.

Now, it does depend on where one is going and what wines are available there. If we went on a vacation to Croatia, I’d probably not bring wine, or maybe just pack a couple of bottles into our suitcases, because there would be a lot of good, moderately priced, and interesting local wines to explore even if I weren’t on a wine-country / winery-visiting type of trip in Croatia.

But if I’m going to Mexico, Hawaii, Caribbean, skiing, etc., I’d much rather have bottles from my cellar than try to hunt down good wines there. Plus, I have way too many bottles as it is - clearing out a case worth last week was a nice (very small) step in the right direction.

i can live a few weeks without wine.

Are you a super hero??

I’m coming up on two years since my last not work-related trip out of town, I don’t remember.