[coyotewildwomen]

Hi,

We have a large wine collection in the States and would like to bring it over if we can. Has anyone brought over wine from the UK or USA? Can you get a climate controlled container or portion of one to do so? What about customs issues?

Thanks,

Wendy

[CjChris]

We brought over three medium boxes of wine (approx 36 bottles)..some from what we had already (a mix) and a few bottles of my faves that we bought on sale in the weeks prior to packing. We just made sure we didn't have one whole box of the same kind of wine...didn't want to be charged for it...so we mixed 'em up just in case. (We also packed a large box of assorted liquor :yes , some bottles opened, some not. It's too expensive to throw away!). We put bubble wrap around ea. bottle's middle. We did not get a climate controlled container because they are expensive!!

All bottles were fine...no breakages, and from what we've sampled of the wine so far, it's all still good! ;-) :cheers To protect other items in the container in case of a breakage, we did line each wine/liquor box with a heavy duty trash bag. We put tape around tops of liquor bottles that had been opened.

As for MAF, they never even asked us about seeing the wine or liquor. So, I say bring it all unless you have an entire cellar full, in which case they might get twitchy about it! :uhoh

[jen]

Chris said it all very well but I'll add my experience briefly. We brought ~20 cases of wine in our non-climate-controlled container with our other belongings. So far it all has tasted fine & we had no breakage although one or two did leak through the cork as they had been upside down.

MAF didn't ask to inspect it, however Customs did ask about it. All we had to do was write up a little one-page explanation that we had brought a private collection of mixed wines - not 20 cases of the same thing that we could possibly resell.

Good luck!
Jen

[cathgates]

We've had a couple of companies come to give us shipping quotes, and they both told us we would be charged duty on the wines and spirits we wanted to bring, they said that customs would assume that we had taken our quota of duty free whilst travelling to NZ?
I told them both that after looking at the threads on here, private collections are not charged on. They both said that the people who had not been charged had simply been lucky!!!
I do tend to trust the info on here more than other sources, but is this possibly the case?

Cath X

[Smiler]

We've had a couple of companies come to give us shipping quotes, and they both told us we would be charged duty on the wines and spirits we wanted to bring, they said that customs would assume that we had taken our quota of duty free whilst travelling to NZ?
I told them both that after looking at the threads on here, private collections are not charged on. They both said that the people who had not been charged had simply been lucky!!!
I do tend to trust the info on here more than other sources, but is this possibly the case?

Cath X
Tosh!

Like the removal man who wouldn't pack my fabric conditioner because he said it was flammable! :laugh

We had OH's decent wine collection and the contents of our drinks cupboard, opened and unopened. No tax or duty was payable and MAF didn't even look at it.

Just email MAF, print off their answer and have it with you on packing day and when your stuff is inspected in NZ.

[Familyofmonkeys]

Tosh!

Like the removal man who wouldn't pack my fabric conditioner because he said it was flammable! :laugh

We had OH's decent wine collection and the contents of our drinks cupboard, opened and unopened. No tax or duty was payable and MAF didn't even look at it.

Just email MAF, print off their answer and have it with you on packing day and when your stuff is inspected in NZ.

Good advice. You can talk to both customs and MAF direct....just make sure you keep a hard copy of the correspondance with you in ase someone tries to charge you for anything later.