The Auswine Forum

I had wished to take a couple of fine red wines to friends in France, as cabin luggage, before the new security measures which only allow 100 mls of liquid.
I presume I could now pack them in my suitcases but I am concerned in case of the wine leaking out (with the pressure differential in the hold) and spoling all my clothes(as well as the loss of the wine).

Can anyone advise whether there are containers for a bottle which could contain any liquid spillage? I am a Melbourne resident.

ToZo wrote:I had wished to take a couple of fine red wines to friends in France, as cabin luggage, before the new security measures which only allow 100 mls of liquid.
I presume I could now pack them in my suitcases but I am concerned in case of the wine leaking out (with the pressure differential in the hold) and spoling all my clothes(as well as the loss of the wine).

Can anyone advise whether there are containers for a bottle which could contain any liquid spillage? I am a Melbourne resident.

I've never had problems with bottles packed in my (in hold) luggage. If you are worried, perhaps put each bottle in a plastic bag.

dave

I have packed wine in my luggage on nearly every international flight for the last few years and have never had a problem. I wrap them in bubble wrap for a little extra insurance but no breaks yet.

Cheers

ToZo wrote:I had wished to take a couple of fine red wines to friends in France, as cabin luggage, before the new security measures which only allow 100 mls of liquid.
I presume I could now pack them in my suitcases but I am concerned in case of the wine leaking out (with the pressure differential in the hold) and spoling all my clothes(as well as the loss of the wine).

Can anyone advise whether there are containers for a bottle which could contain any liquid spillage? I am a Melbourne resident.

I pack my bottles in polystyrene shipping packs, either the 2 or 3-packs are most space efficient. You may be able to get some free packs from your favourite independent retailer or Jeremy Oliver is giving away his stockpile (in Melb) at the moment. www.jeremyoliver.com.au

I've never had a breakage or leaker as long back as I can remember, at least 10 years.

I have packed many a bottle of wine in my luggage. My partner and I once arrived in Canada carrying about 24 bottles of wine, port and madeira in our luggage and hand pieces. No leaks or breakages.

The secret of packing wine in your luggage is to wrap the bottles in clothes and making sure that there is a layer of clothing between the bottles and the sides of the luggage. In my case I had a soft-sided backpack. I made sure the wines were in the middle, wrapped by articles of clothing, set firmly in the middle, and protected from the sides by other articles of clothing. In other words, the wines were "suspended" in the middle of the pack. Doing the same thing using bubble wrap is also a good idea.

Good luck.................Mahmoud.

Packing wine into your luggage is extremely risky as all airlines now make the customer responsible for any damage to other passengers property arising from broken bottles esp. red wine.

In a suitcase is bad enough but in a backpack...sheesh!

Just ask the next check-in person what they know about broken bottles and you'll never do it again.

I've traveled with wine in my checked luggage a number of times. Never had a problem. Before the current restrictions I went from Sydney to LA to San Diego with wine in my carry-on. The leg from LA to SD uses a twin engined plane with very little room for carry on, so I removed bottles from the bag, let then stow the bag, and took the bottles wrapped in T-shirts on board. A bottle of Kalleske Shiraz slipped out while I was walking to my seat, the bottle hit the floor with a loud thud, a woman sreamed........and then the bottle bounced and rattled round but didn't break! For those few seconds my heart was in my mouth, not because it was bottle of good wine but, because a broken bottle would have meant that the flight would have been canceled, and I would have been really popular with my fellow passsengers, not to mention Miranda. In some ways I'm glad that I'm no longer allowed to carry wine on-board!

Last trip back from NZ we used single bottle styrofoam wine boxes to put excess wine in our checked luggage, after we filled up an 8 bottle box with the same containers. They worked OK, but take up a lot of space. I'm thinking about something a little more solid for future airline travel.

Mike

KMP wrote:Last trip back from NZ we used single bottle styrofoam wine boxes to put excess wine in our checked luggage, after we filled up an 8 bottle box with the same containers. They worked OK, but take up a lot of space.

The single-bottle containers are very space-inefficient, the twos and threes seem to be just as safe but take up a lot less space than 2 or 3 singles. My favourite local independent is always happy to give me a couple when I'm travelling overseas although I have a good stock myself at present.

Red Bigot wrote:

KMP wrote:Last trip back from NZ we used single bottle styrofoam wine boxes to put excess wine in our checked luggage, after we filled up an 8 bottle box with the same containers. They worked OK, but take up a lot of space.

The single-bottle containers are very space-inefficient, the twos and threes seem to be just as safe but take up a lot less space than 2 or 3 singles. My favourite local independent is always happy to give me a couple when I'm travelling overseas although I have a good stock myself at present.

Brian,

Yes I would have loved to have had some multiple bottle containers but when we looked for them in the postal store in Martinborough all they had were singles. I've now have some 3-bottle containers - they came in a wine shipment from Marlborough, NZ!

Mike

I've packed wines in luggage many times without a problem. Also within Australia I often take a case as checked luggage. They just make you sign a form that they're not responsible, and you have to drop it at a special counter. It comes out with the normal luggage, and no breakages yet. They certainly don't want to be cleaning up their conveyor belts.
Cheers, Duncan

I always pack my wine bottles in my checked luggage and have never experienced breakage. You might also consider luggage wrap as another measure (in the event there is a break or leak), that it hopefully won't damage anybody elses possessions. Depends which airport you are departing from. Here are links for Brisbane and Melbourne.

http://www.protectabag.com.au/

http://www.melbourne-airport.com.au/air ... .asp?id=41

Regards, Maria

Grant wrote:I have packed wine in my luggage on nearly every international flight for the last few years and have never had a problem. I wrap them in bubble wrap for a little extra insurance but no breaks yet.

Cheers

Agree. Just arrive in NZ with 10 bottles in this format. None broken but probably a little shaken.

Chuck

I've mainly carried bottles in carry-on since a nasty Qantas experience in 1994. I did the bottles wrapped in clothes thing, bottles suspended in the middle of the case (not a backpack!) and all looked fine.

The baggage handling managed to achieve several things:
1. They ripped off one of the screwed on legs on the case
2. They smashed the four bottles inside
3. The wine then drained away quite nicely out of my luggage through the new drainage hole they'd made by ripping the leg off.

The washup was that my clothes etc were barely damaged by the broken reds, but my then girlfriend's luggage managed to be directly underneath mine, and so caught the draining wine.

I may have been ill-advised to say, after looking at my bag, that "It doesn't look too bad - kind of lucky they ripped the leg off", before checking the state of her luggage...

pstarr wrote:I may have been ill-advised to say, after looking at my bag, that "It doesn't look too bad - kind of lucky they ripped the leg off", before checking the state of her luggage...

When my Thai friends visited a couple of years ago they took back 32 bottles of red between the two them. I held on to a couple of extra carry-on bags full of wine while they checked in, to save on excess baggage charges. They didn't get pinged while boarding either, perhaps his Thai Air Force casual uniform shirt helped. All the checked-in wine was in those almost indestructible fibreglass/plastic luggage, not the soft-sided ones.

I travel a lot and use a samsonite hard case with a retractable divider allowing the wines to be suspended in the middle of the case...never had a breakage, even experimented by dropping a 22kg case with a bottle inside about 3 metres, no breakage...

Adam wrote:... even experimented by dropping a 22kg case with a bottle inside about 3 metres...

Hope it was a poor vintage.

Tozo

The temperature and pressure in the aircraft hold are for all intents and purposes identical to the cabin.

However, it is very important you insulate your wines against temperature change on a hot or cold tarmac. It doesn't take much as indicated above- a pair of jeans could do the trick.

Don't believe me? Why don't the cats & dogs come out as ice blocks at the other end?

pstarr wrote:I've mainly carried bottles in carry-on since a nasty Qantas experience in 1994. I did the bottles wrapped in clothes thing, bottles suspended in the middle of the case (not a backpack!) and all looked fine.

The baggage handling managed to achieve several things:

...

Baggage handlers can do the dumbest things!

When Miranda and I flew back to San Diego from NZ last December our arrival at the terminal was delayed because another plane was occupying our gate. As our plane waited for the gate to open up we watched baggage handlers load a nearby plane. As usual these guys were just throwing the bags onto a small conveyor belt that lifts the bags to the cargo bay door. One bag got almost to the top before it fell to the ground. It looked like a hard sided bag but the fall was enough for it to burst open onto the tarmac. Clothes went everywhere. The baggage handler simply stuffed them back into the bag and put it back on the conveyor belt! I pity the poor soul who owns that bag, and I hope he/she was compensated. The bigger problem was that the same guys were probably going to be involved in off-loading our luggage (including wine). Worse was the fact that we had to wait an extra day because only one of our four pieces of luggage made our flight, and it wasn’t the wine! Everything came out well in the end, but seeing that bag smash onto the ground and the lack of concern of the handler has made me think twice about having wine in my checked luggage.

Another personal experience happened many years ago when I was traveling to a conference here in the US. As I was about to collect my bag from the conveyor belt in Baggage Claim I noticed that it was wet. At the same time an irate airline official came up and asked me if it was my bag and was I carrying wine. He made me open the bag to prove I did not have any wine. Satisfied, he offered to pay for the wet clothes to be cleaned, and then continued to search for the bag with the wine bottle. The more serious problem was that as I was handling my bag I received several small cuts from glass imbedded in my bag. Now that I think back on it, I wonder if a careless baggage handler had smashed open that bag because there is no way I could have gotten glass stuck into my luggage if a bottle broke inside an intact bag.

Mike

I've taken anywhere between 6 and 24 bottles of wine between NY and Sydney and vice versa on many occasions and never had a problem. I use the styrofoam packaging Brian refers to, though generally the 6 or 12 bottle packs. I then check these as standalone 'luggage' with the fragile stickers all over the box.

Mike