My wine in the suitcase went from very warm in Nice to neutral in Paris, then to very cold in Frankfurt and back to warm in Los Angeles!

Imported wine goes through the same temperature changes when shipped by the European winery during the warmer months. They may even get cooked inside the unrefrigerated cargo ship or while sitting in the warmer ports. Hopefully they don't run into a strike in the transit ports.

I believe wine gets irreversibly damaged when the temperature goes beyond 75-80 degrees for a prolonged period, some are more sensitive than others. Those who subscribe to "wine of the month club" ought to wonder how their wine gets delivered by the unrefrigerated UPS trucks in the summer heat. For that reason, we always pick up our preordered cases of wines directly from the winery.

We just returned from Italy on October 3rd and were allowed to bring back 1.5 liters of alcohol each.

We brought back a Chianti, Brunello, Vernazza and Merlot, all from around Tuscany.

We wrapped, wrapped, and wrapped the bottles in our t-shirts, sweats, and had one styrofoam container that we used for the Brunello. Piled a pillow we brought with us on the top of the suitcase for extra support and padding.

Was a bit paranoid about breakage, but turned out everything was fine.

Other passengers didn't appear to be so lucky. There were quite a few suitcases with wet stains and dripping liquid from their cases as they came off the plane. Hope they didn't spend a lot.

Wish they would allow wine as carry on now...I can understand why not..but all I was thinking about the entire flight home was our Brunello!

Good luck!

I went through security at San Diego two weeks ago and the TSA had two bottles of wine sitting there that they took away from someone.

How I would hate for one of those bottles to break open in my checked bag.

Is it really worth it?

Just came back with 9 bottles of red wine packed in a box. I wrapped each bottle individually with two plastic bags then I put a big plastic bag inside the cardboard box which I asked from the hotel front desk. Not a single bottle broke and I've done this a few times every year since 1995.