Bringing cider home from France

Yes, check the bottled beverages on your return flight. If you have room in your carry-on bag for the bottles, pack them with clothing protecting the bottles. If unwashed clothing is delayed I'm sure that the clothing would not go rancid.

If you don't have room in your carry-on, you could get a sturdy card board box and pack the bottles with padding and secure with strapping tape and cord. You can even used unwashed clothing to protect the bottles. Airline may have you sign a waiver for the cardboard box.

First, you cannot put it in your carry on unless you mean to check your carry on bag. You can buy at any shipping store shipping materials - bubble wrap, padding etc. There are also specialized shipping bags/sleeves for wine bottles made of heavy plastic and sealable. Even with the best of efforts bottles will break. We lose a bottle a few years that turned most of my used underwear pink when one of three bottle very carefully packed was broken. We now carry three wine sleeves to pack bottles in. I am sure you find them in Europe.

We don't plan to carry wine or whatever back but sometimes we end up with a bottle or two. It of course has to go in checked luggage; properly packed you could check a whole case of wine as luggage. We have just wrapped in clothes and put it in the luggage. We did have a friend who was bringing lambic beer as a gift back to the US who had the bottles break and ruin her clothing. Wine bottles are tougher but I am not sure about cider. I would probably wrap in absorbent clothing that wouldn't be ruined like jeans and underwear and then put in plastic bags and hope for the best.

We always travel with an expandable duffle that fits in the outer pocket of one of our suitcases. ON the way home if we have things like your calvados, we then offload some of our laundry, shoes etc to the expansion bag and let the souvenirs or wine or whatever go into the checked bag. You can also easily pick up an expansion bag in Paris; there are lots of shops that sell cheap luggage including duffles and cheap roller bags.

You could buy a cheap hard-sided suitcase over there to pack them in. If they're packed well so as not to bounce around and hit each other, the biggest danger is a bottle hitting a sharp edge. Or maybe a thirsty baggage handler.

Go to one of these locations: Rayon D'Or.
They will have the cheapest bags available - hard sided, soft-sided, anything you want.
You can purchase a little bubble wrap at Office Depot or Monoprix, or buy a cardboard box to deconstruct and tape up to protect your purchases.
Put everything in checked luggage. Not worth the money to ship it.

We usually bring around 7-10 bottles back from France. Before the liquid ban, it was easy; we'd just bring them as carry-on. Now, my wife, who is a terrific packer, uses a few of the cardboard wine carriers that we picked up at wineries as a start, then uses bubble wrap if we have any, and clothes, to keep things cushioned and avoid movement in the suitcases, which are soft sided. Nothing has ever broken so far; that's because I don't get involved in the packing.

Thanks Lisa
Never heard of calvados, so google was my friend this morning. I had hard cider in quebec city which was great. Four great friends leaving for Venice next saturday then on to Paris for a week, then train to amsterdam. I will be on the look out for this brandy. Hoping to find a bottle in paris, we are doing champagne tour in a 2CV car in reims, champagne bliss seine river cruise, private taxi tour on prosecco road outside venice, cichetti tour, private canal cruise with booze and food in amsterdam, (as you can see this is our wine and dine vacation we all need). While looking up the product, found a recipe (poulet aux pommes) chicken w/ apples. (deglaze chicken drippings with brandy, add heavy cream, sounds so yummy.
I bought several bottles of wine in kentucky this past june, like i don't have enough wineries near me, LOL, bought bubble wrap, old newspapers, and dirty clothes (wrapped it good), check it thru as checked bag, don't think you're paying for checked bag or bags, (depending how many is "several" and how heavy). My bag made it back safely. Happy travels
Aloha Princess Pupule

you need bubble wrap and your clothes and stuff the bag with paper so nothing moves around.
I've even put two 12 ounce bottles in my running shoes in my checked bag and that worked well

That recipe should read "deglaze the pan drippings with Calvados!"
Ordinary brandy will not do...

Many Calvados brands are available in American liquor stores, and at least 20 artisanal ciders are made within 25 miles of my home town ... Just saying ...

A lot of French cider is very heavily carbonated, and I'd be worried about it blowing its cork inside the suitcase in a low-pressure aircraft hold.

We have brought cases of wine back from Corsica (2015) and Chamonix (just a few days ago). I also brought 6 bottles back from Croatia to Seattle in June. This time, the British Airways agent said they don't like taking liquid but she took it and just made us sign a waiver in case it broke, which they always seem to do. We usually find a good wine shop and pick out a case and have them wrap it up for us. Giving them a day or two is often helpful since they need to get tape, etc. but we've found that wine shops are generally accommodating and willing to help. Though we are over the duty free limit for alcohol, US customs agents have never asked us to pay taxes. I don't think a single case is worth their while. Sometimes I'll just wrap it well in our clothes and put it in our luggage (backpack/carry on) if it's only a bottle or two and then just check our bag home (never had a bottle break this way).

As an aside, we also take a case of wine to Hawaii on our annual pilgrimage there and have shipped cases within the USA (OR, CA) to Seattle when flying home. We've only ever had one bottle break (in a case from Santa Barbara). A small price to pay for many enjoyable meals with our transported bottles. They extend the joy of our trips.

Re Tom and Philip above

good point; I think the lambic beer exploded because of the relatively less secure bottles and the carbonation and cider is the same way

And cider is now a thing in the US which was not true years ago -- there are literally dozens of ciders available to us at local grocery stores and imported ciders from Brittany at the local wine emporium and Calvados, same deal. The only wine we have found that it makes sense to bring back in years is Vin Santo which we are having trouble getting here. It would have to be an unusual and also very good wine for us to bother. We have a choice of hundreds of European wines, and a couple dozen olive oils, and a couple dozen ciders within 10 miles of our home.

At least these days people can't lug this stuff in the cabin. I remember years ago watching olive oil drip onto the people in the row ahead of us on an airplane because someone had put it in the overhead bin which was surprisingly leaky and it had flowed all over people's coats and bags and dripped out.

There is something delicious about Brittany and Normandy cider, but it's a living liquid and those bottles aren't designed for air travel. Let us know what happens.

We used these bringing back wine from Italy. Still cushioned the bottles with clothes; everything traveled back safe and sound.

Liquids will have to be checked in.

A few years ago, I brought back a bottle of port in my checked in luggage, well secured so I thought with bubble wrap and wedged in with clothes. Wrong. The bottle broke, causing glass shards to shred half of the clothes in the suitcase and the rest were dyed red. It cost more to replace the clothes than I saved on the port.

These days, drinks can be ordered online even if they aren't available locally. Far less hassle.

I remember waiting at the luggage carousel for my checked bag containing two bottles of well-wrapped wine, and looking at the woman standing next to me with horror as we both smelled wine coming from someone's checked bag. Neither of us, but someone was very disappointed - maybe it was Frank with now-pink underwear!