shipping wine to UK from New Zealand

[Helen]

I'm off to New Zealand for Christmas and New Year in 10 days time. I'll be staying most of the time in Auckland with family, but we're all off to Hawkes Bay for a week in early January. No doubt there will be many visits to wineries! Planning ahead, I thought I would investigate how I might ship back wine, should I find some (or many) things I liked not usually found over here - the wine reviews in Cuisine regularly leaving me quite frustrated... But I can't find information on how I would do that as an individual, shipping in wine for my personal consumption rather than for retail - everything I have found on the web is aimed at businesses.

Does anyone have any ideas, experience or knowledge of doing this?

Recommendations for wineries welcome too!

Helen

[PCL]

Helen, from my time in the UK, the Home Office offers help in terms of repatriation of British subjects and their belongings. That might be somewhere to start.

Alternately, try contacting a wine seller in NZ direct as I'm sure a lot of them would know a thing or two about shipping the good stuf around the world.

There will be import duty, excises and VAT payable.

Also, you might want to check up on prices before you leave. I found that in many cases, the retail price for New World wines in the UK were cheaper than cellar door prices in the country of origin.

Which leads me to a bugbear... why the hell do we pay more for stuff here than it people overseas... oh, yeah, market forces...

[jackal10]

You can personally carry up to 2 litres of still wine duty free

For small quantities, use a standard shipper like FedeX or DHL.

Make the declaration. and they will bill you the duty and VAT on delivvery

http://www.dhl.co.uk/publish/gb/en/informa...d_vat.high.html

http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalW...CE_PROD1_023923

For most wine duty is about £1.17/bottle plus 17% VAT. That and the cost of shipping means that you get much better value on shipping better rather than cheaper wines.

[helenjp]

I have only made brief enquiries when back in NZ, but a winery owner complained to me about how hard/expensive it was to send smallish amounts of wine to overseas customers.

If you follow Jackal10's advice, it may cost more than you expect, but it is probably cheaper than the post, and I've found delivery (though not of wine) prompt and reliable. Myself, I've given up trying to send wine, and either drink it there or carry a couple of bottles as cabin baggage.

[Taubear]

We have lived in New Zealand for the past 6 years and returned to Sydney for work and live recently. We have found the it's cheaper to buy most N.Z. wines here than it is in N.Z or they are about the same price. We lived in Caterbury and have even managed to find bottles from relativly small vineyards for sale in Sydney bottle shops. Recently I bought several bottles of Pegasus Bay Semion/Semillon for AU$28/bottle. It NZ$30 at the cellar door. I think your better off sourcing a good bottle store or online UK wine merchant to purchase your wine. You won't get any breakages that way either.

[Shinboners]

Try www.winestar.com.au

Ask for Bert and tell them that Daniel Chan sent you. He might be able to help you.

[helenjp]

Not forgetting that AUD28.00 *is* NZD30.00. But yes, the value of buying from the winery is usually tasting and discussing rather than discounting, sadly!

[Helen]

Many thanks for all these tips - no, I wasn't necessarily expecting to get bargains, but I remember from my last trip 3 years ago, and know from reading Cuisine, that there are really really drinkable wines in NZ which simply aren't produced in sufficient quantities to be shipped here commercially.

I am planning to use my duty free allowance (miserably small) to bring back kiwi pudding wines, only one of which (Forrest Estate) I've ever seen over here.

Only 9 days to go now!

Helen