shipping TO Europe

Hi everybody,

I apologise if this has already been answered, but a search on the forum only brings up recommendations for ways to ship to the USA.
I was wondering if anyone has tried shipping wine from the USA to Europe (UK specifically)?
Any recommendations for a shipping or logistics company would be great.
I’m also curious about rates and whether the preferred way is groupage on a ship or by air.
Shipping would be picking up a pallet from Domaine storage, not from a winery.

Thanks in advance!

I can’t really help but you would have to pay UK VAT (20%) and duty (£2 a bottle (ish)) on import unless kept in bond.

I’m aware of that, but living in two places has its up and downs… :slight_smile:
Besides, with the current exchange rate, this is going to be much less than a couple of years ago.

Just had Seabrook Exports in the UK deal with my old Amarone-collection to bring it to the US. They might be able to arrange the import as well. Talk to John Wyatt and see if he can help you.

http://www.seabrookexports.com/contacts.html

you might ask Domaine. I seem to remember that they once said on a thread they could ship something from Burgundy to the US. Maybe they can ship for you to Europe.

My experience has been that it is really quite expensive…

sounds like you just need two cellars.

mine also. Really, really expensive.

Thank you everyone for comments and the suggestions!
I’ll see how the numbers stack up… champagne.gif

This is what I opted for. All of my US-based wines will stay there, save for whatever I occasionally drag back. Expensive and a pain to keep two, but consolidating into one over here made zero financial sense.

Hi Mikhail,
We use JF Hillebrand in shipping wines from France to Japan. They are beverage specialist, maybe they do US to UK shipments as well.
Regards,
Alino

Please close the loop and report back what you find and rates if you would.

Curious myself.

I’ve had a couple of cases of wine shipped from South Africa to UK several times.

There were two options: get the shipper to pay all taxes, i.e. the fee you pay shipper will include all taxes or not.

If not then the shipper will deliver the wines and then afterwards pursue the recipient for the taxes plus their admin fee.

As well as duty on still wine there is higher duty on sparkling wine, and VAT (currently 20%) is applied after taxes have been added.

I now opt to pay taxes up front as I found the shippers bill incomprehensible and their admin charge (for dealing with customs and paying due taxes) hefty.

Thank you everyone to your suggestions and insights.
Also thank you everyone who offered to help.
In the end I opted to have a local UK carrier to deal with the shipment and paperwork. They were also well recommended locally here in the UK.

I used Seabrook. Everything has arrived safe and sound, good advice on the documentation too.
The rates worked out to be about 85GBP per full case or about 100-110USD.
It would’ve been cheaper by about 15USD per case if the whole shipment could’ve gone in bulk, but to avoid filling out lots of paperwork we shipped it in 99 liter chunks - the UK customs don’t require any supporting documentation in this case.

Seabrook was great with one caveat. They are not great at communication with clients. If you want to get an answer, you’d better call. Email only works sporadically. Otherwise, they were on the ball, to the point, timely, good delivery, etc.

Now, that I’ve got these cases here in the UK (just in time for Christmas!), I have a few bottles to sell - have to offset the shipping costs somehow. [wow.gif]
Including a set of Bedrock Weill a Way Exposition Syrah 2011 and 2013.
If anyone is interested, PM me.
I’ll also put a longer version in the Commerce Corner.

Happy holidays! champagne.gif