Most of our US based vacations are either bike or wine relate. On the bike trips we take a few bottles of wine and supplement with beer. On wine trips, well…
On trips outside of the US we pick up wine when we get there. Sometimes good stuff and sometimes daily drinker stuff. We have yet to do a non US dedicated wine trip though I would love to.
Maybe he’s a wine camel.
You can bring wine through TSA as long as you check your bag. I usually fly an airline with first bag free, so last week I took wine both coming and going. But if I don’t check a bag, I’m going to find a place to get wine wherever I end up. Part of travel is to find new food and that means you gotta have wine. I don’t drink beer or cocktails or soda, so what else is there?
I have wine every day but on trips the consumption level tends to go up, esp if it’s a wine trip.
I answered “normal” but I do occasionally take wine with me. We have a family vacation each year where we get together with my brother and mom with our kids. We all like wine and we generally drink some wines inherited from my dad. I’m also just about to go to Georgia to cycle with Mr. Alfert and the Flatlanders and I’ll be packing a sixer of thin, weedy, over the hill French wines. Then the next week my wife and I will head to Portland on Amtrak for the weekend and I plan to take a couple of great aged Bordeaux.
Depends.
Sailing, we pack a fair bit of rose, Muscadet, and the like, with a couple bottles of Cotes du Rhone or Zin. Contemplative wine just doesn’t show well at all in that situation, IMO.
Going to Europe, we buy wine there.
On a road trip, we pack some stuff.
Otherwise, we generally do without.
Most of my vacations involve going through wine regions of, mainly, France & Spain. I never bring bottles from home with me (except, rarely, when on short trips to HK); and just buy my wines wherever I may be, 99% in restaurants from their wine lists, concentrating on wines of the general locality of wherever I happen to be. In Spain and France, I have wine with most every lunch and dinner, everyday. I do buy some bottles to bring back to Manila; but, not many.
Best,
N
LMD - I always bring some when I go there. What’s interesting is that a lot of wine makers in both countries are interested in Zinfandel, as it’s something they don’t have. So it’s nice to bring some.
Wow, I couldn’t disagree more. Is it the “same old thing…in a different location” to bring your wife along? 
Having great wine from my cellar with me, to supplement what I find in wherever I’m visiting, is making sure I get the most pleasure out of the experience. Most of the time in restaurants we do order local, only occasionally bringing our own. But in our hotel room or apartments we rent, we are very glad to have special wine with us. In Asia especially, it can often (not always) be either difficult or very expensive to buy locally. We don’t pay any baggage fees, and are usually checking something anyway.
We also almost always bring a bottle of old or rare whisky which is MUCH more difficult to find locally. We enjoy it ourselves, of course, and I can’t tell you the number of times we have found whisky lovers among the chefs/bartenders/artists/shop owners etc. we encounter, with whom we make a great connection over a taste from that special bottle.
That’s a dangerous question to ask Sarah! ![[rofl.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/a/a7452fcd8e675af869f8da01174474a545b03944.gif "rofl"){kind=small}
I “bring” wine on most vacations that are not to a wine region since it doesn’t make sense to bring wine to burgundy or Napa. Too much hassle these days to bring with me so I usually ship ahead. I also find less travel shock if I ship ground rather than air so I do that if the trip is not too far and weather conditions are good. Most recently I sent a six pack to Charleston for a long weekend trip.
For those of you who bring stems with you, how do you handle packing/transport?
Wine plays a huge part in our vacations. We travel a lot and I just throw a bunch of bottles in our suitcases that we are already checking. My rule of thumb, is one bottle per night! I generally bring younger wines on vacation. I don’t find travel shock to be an issue on younger wines, but it is on older wines with sediment, like old barolo, etc.
If you don’t take vacations, you will regret it for the rest of your life.
My trips are based on photography opportunities, so all my camera gear goes with me and wine stays home. I can always find something decent to drink (at least so far).
I bring wine on every trip I go on, and usually bring most of it back home with me. We always seem to be on a fast pace going from here to there - usually hitting 3-4 restaurants/pubs at night and never really sitting down at one place for an entire dinner. There are exceptions of course when we are going somewhere where there is a restaurant I really want to sit down at.
Also - I’m in the beer business aside from the wine business, and usually am more interested in trying the local beers than popping a cork.
Hubby is on the mad rush to finish the dissertation. We deserve a nice vacation when it is finished.
My wife doesn’t drink wine so I don’t bring any with me or drink it on vacations. For business trips on my own I always ship out goodies ahead of time to the hotel I’m staying at and my colleagues love it!
I find Anton’s comment very interesting. If you think about it, you take a vacation from some things (for example, work, school, household chores) at the same time as you take a vacation to other things (the beach, skiing, sleeping in, gambling, hiking). If you have kids, sometimes you take a vacation from them, sometimes you take a vacation in order to spend more time with them.
So one thing is whether wine is something you take a vacation to or a vacation from. Or maybe it’s not wine per se, but “the wine from your cellar and that you normally drink” is something you take a vacation from, while “different wines that I prefer while vacationing” or “the local wines I can get at my destination” are something you vacation to.
Again, no right or wrong here and no judgment, but I’m just interested in exploring how people perceive wine in the context of taking a vacation, at least when wine and wine country isn’t the main subject of a particular vacation.
If we are doing a road trip and renting a house where we can cook I will always bring wine. If we are flying and staying in a hotel it’s rare I bring wine unless I’m going to an offline as part of the trip. We only drink wine with meals and I would rather pay the up charge at a restaurant than checking wine on a flight. Plus I like showing up to a restaurant and going through the list looking for fun things to try. I generally only bring wines to a restaurant if it’s an offline even when I’m not traveling.
That’s all well and good, but what about the wine?