Flying high

With summer on its way and vacations in the planning stages, I thought it would be a good time to share some travel tips on how to pack your wine while traveling. Nobody wants that really nice bottle of Zin that they bought at Souza Family Vineyard to shatter at 30,000 feet.

Recently the travel experts at Fodor’s gave wine drinkers some helpful hints for storing and shipping their wine while traveling, offering relief to those who fork over a small fortune to bring home some classic delights. As your luggage is handled by various people and jostled on planes and conveyor belts, the risk of having an expensive bottle of red break and spill all over your clothes increases. Of primary importance is the traveler’s awareness of airport rules and restrictions. You never want to be surprised at airport security, so it’s important to understand the ins and outs of TSA rules for transporting alcohol before purchasing a bottle, especially one that you want to take home. According to the research by Fodor’s, the best way to store wine is through your checked in luggage. All wine meets the TSA rules for alcohol content – anything 70 percent or below is allowable. Restrictions exist for the amount of alcohol you can carry when the wine in question has an ABV of between 24 and 70 percent, but those transporting the usual bottle of vino can bring as many milliliters as they’d like, the article said.

Although TSA regulations prohibit passengers from passing through security points with containers which have more than 3.4 milliliters (ml) of liquid, the age old duty-free loophole still exists. The only way to get around the 3.4 ml rule is by purchasing alcohol after you’ve gotten through the security checkpoint at one of the duty-free stores. Duty-free allowances differ depending on country; the U.S. typically allows one duty-free liter of alcohol per person. Before we get into the packing tips, it’s well to remember that none of this works with carry-ons, so keep that in mind especially at the checkpoints.

Here are some of the packing tips. Keep it real simple: layers, layers and more layers. Fodor’s suggests putting the bottle in a sock, then wrapping the neck in clothes until its width is equal to that of the bottle. Then, add a few more layers of clothing around the bottle. We have had customers in our tasting room tell us this is very successful. Regardless of how you wrap the bottle, make sure to pack it in the middle of a full suitcase to minimize the amount that the bottle will move and vibrate during transport.

There are in fact some wine specific packing solutions, Fodor’s offered three suggestions: WineSkin transport bags; inflatable VinnieBags; or the WineCheck transport case. As a matter of fact, if you’re flying Southwest Airlines, you can purchase wine packaging for five dollars at the ticket counter. And lastly, the ultimate failsafe option is shipping the wine to your home directly from the winery. This is something we do quite often at Souza Winery when we have guests visiting from other states. Like a lot of wineries, there are restrictions to shipping within the United States, but hey we live here and it’s swell.