Wine shipped to ship?

[calaloo]

We are doing a Baltic Oceania cruise and want to ship wine from Calif to our staterooms. We are Calif wine collectors and would rather drink what we know than the European wines we don't. We are told we can pay corkage at dinner. Can we ship a few cases to the cruise line? Are there any regs that prevent this? How will the waiters react if we bring wine to dinner? Has anyone sent booze to themselves on a trip? We might slip in our favorite gin as well. Thanks for your input.

[Mrs_R]

We thought about doing that ourselves. After living in the Sonoma wine region for 25 years we've developed a preference for California wines and strong opinions about what we will and won't drink. The only way that I can see shipping it is by using a company that ships luggage to cruise ships. They'd be set up to deal with cruise ship schedules better than a more typical shipping company, such as UPS or FEDX. Your TA may know of one or you could just use a search engine to locate them online.

 

We flew 6 bottles of wine with us from California to Florida for a 7 day cruise. I packed them in a cardboard box fitted with heavy duty styrofoam bottle sleeves, all of which I purchased in our local wine shop for under $10. We sealed up the box with lots of tape and "Fragile" stickers, then checked it in with our luggage at the airport. No problems. When we and our luggage arrived at the airport shuttle the Princess Rep took one look at our cardboard box and said "Oh good, there's the wine." So I guess that we didn't think of anything new.

 

The nights that we ate in the diningroom, we prefer Personal Choice dining, I would just carry a bottle in with me and set it on the table. The waiter would ask if we wanted to drink it with our dinner, and after we said yes, he would open and pour it for us. We were never charged a corking fee, but others have been, so the corkage fee is hit or miss.

 

I hope that information helps. Have a great cruise!

[hotmike98]

Not exactly the same situation, but when cruising out of Seattle, we called a Seattle wine shop (recommended by someone on this board), and they had a case delivered to our pre-cruise hotel. If you are staying in your embarkation city a day or two beforehand, I would think it would be easier to have your wine shipped there, as it is in a fixed location, and thus the wine can be received any day it arrives. Remember, the ship only rents the dock space for the day of departure.

[sultan_sfo]

Copenhagen had excellent wine stores in the Stroget area (walking mall). Though you may not get the best Calif wine there, excellent high end French, Argentinean, and other wines (US$50 and above) were available there. If the cruise originates there, then you may wish to try out some of those wines. DW and I also took 2 bottles each of Sonoma wines (from small wineries we like to visit) all the way in our carry-on. Princess' wine list on their ships is quite good and interestingly the higher end wines have a low mark-up. Corkage on Princess is $10. /Sultan

[Mrs_R]

If your ship is leaving from a foriegn port you may run into restrictions on how much wine you can bring into the country, duty free at least. I looked into bringing wine with us to Tahiti and found out that we could each bring 2 liters. I didn't check to see if we could bring in more by paying a duty on each bottle.