shipping wine and olive oil to the US

The only way that makes sense is to bring the items home in your checked luggage. You can also use specialized luggage that allows for four to eight bottles. Lots of problems with wine. Not all states allow wine to be shipped to your residence. Issues with customs, taxes, can crop up. Make an error in the customs form and it will turn to vinegar in some NJ warehouse before you see it again. We routine carried three or four bottles of wine home each year with no problems --- UNTIL -- one bottle broke. Wore pink underwear for years. The idea is great and appealing. The execution is the problem.

Good Italian wines are readily available in the US; I would not bother with that, myself. But good fresh genuine Italian olive oil direct from the producer is worth bringing back, especially if it is packed in tins rather than glass. Easy to pack 3-4 tins in a checked bag.

A couple of suggestions what I and other friends did on our trip to France last year. We had a guided wine tour one day and the guide was happy to take bottles my friends purchased and send to them at home in USA, even if from several different wineries. He packed and sent them through some kind of specialty shipping company. I did a little different. I had a preferred winery near the house we rented and I wanted a whole case from that one winery. So I ordered from the winery on their website and they packed and shipped also through a specialty shipping company. Not cheap in either case but reasonable, we calculated cost all in was about ten euro per bottle (plus the cost of the wine). And worth it to enjoy again the happy memories for something we could not get at home. But do check if you can get it at home. Another wine we enjoyed there, purchased inexpensively from a local fruit and vegetable shop, we later found we could get the same at a major wine retailer here at home. Cost at French grocery less than 10 euro/bottle. Cost a local wine shop more like 30 euro/bottle. Still worth it!

Last year we took a Prosecco Tour from Venice, and the tour guide assisted with shipping to the US for us. If interested in Prosecco, we recommend contacting the tour owner at [email protected].

Thanks all! We have always carried home several bottles in our luggage (with no problems ever), but we are spending a month in Umbria and southern Italy and I don't want to have to drag so much around. We have a tour planned in Umbria and they will ship for us. My goal was to mix olive oil and wine together to be shipped, but apparently that is not done. The price from Mailbox etc is outrageous IMO, so I guess we'll just see what happens. We travel light (carry on only going and check it on return) so we will have to definitely limit our purchases. If anybody has shipped from Puglia, I'd love to hear about it. Thanks!

You can carry a case of wine as luggage on the plane; my son used to do this all the time. Obviously well packaged. You can carry wine or oil in a suitcase. You owe customs on amounts above a bottle or so on wine but it is rarely charged when you bring it with you on the plane. If you ship it, it will be charged.

We occasionally bring a nice bottle of wine back that we failed to drink while in Europe but we no longer do this intentionally. We were cured of buying fancy olive oil after an olive oil tasting on a farm where we tasted a very fine product. We bought a big tin of it and when we got it home, it was the olive oil equivalent of plonk. Cheated.

I live in Chicago and can find probably 50 or more different important olive oils. When we lived in Nashville we had lots of choices as well. It is not worth transporting and certainly not worth shipping IMHO. Same with wine. A bottle of very special wine or two -- put it in the suitcase, but for large amounts? Find a good wine merchant in your city and take their advice.

Last fall we did a wine tour in the Barolo region. At each one we asked whether they had an import representative in the U.S. All but one did. These were small family owned and run wineries. So odds are the wineries you visit will have the contact information for someone in the U.S. who can ship you the wine domestically. As for the winery that didn't have a representative, we split a case with 2 other couples and the winery shipped it for us.

We were in Italy for over 3 weeks last year. An Italian friend of ours was closing her kitchen store and we bought a really good (and large) pan, a pasta machine, and then she gave us 3 bottles of homemade passata. Unfortunately, this was during week one of the trip. While I was willing to check a bag to bring this stuff home, neither of us were willing to schlep all of this around Italy for 2+ more weeks. We went to the DHL store near Mercato Centrale on a Friday afternoon and shipped these items home in the largest box they had that was not a custom shipment. Four days later on Monday, our neighbor picked up the pristine box from our doorstep and put it in our home. Nothing was broken, leaking or damaged. It was not cheap but worked very well for us, and it was a very large and heavy box.

salbeachbum, What city was that? Did they do all the packing for you?

It was in Florence and yes, they did all the packing for us. They also were pretty fluent in English (my Italian is ok at best)., but again, in all honesty, it was pricey but worth it to us.—around 200 US dollars. I would do it again if needed.

Thanks! We may have to resign ourselves to tasting and drinking it there (tough job) and just bringing a few bottles home. A sidenote about olive oil though: I checked our luggage last year coming back to the US from Greece (Delta Air). They asked about liquids, etc and I made the mistake of saying I had some olive oil packed. Well, the agent had to call over a supervisor and they grilled us about the oil. I said that it was just very small tins and they were packed well. They let it go, but said oil is considered hazardous because it can start a fire! This time, I will keep my mouth shut and hope they don't look!