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How many bottles of wine..?

How many bottles of wine and/or liquor are we allowed to bring home with us from France? If we send some home what are the rules and regulations?

Depends where home is!

"where" is right. The answer could be zero or as many as you can carry, depending on the "jurisdiction" of your residence - - and also the airport through you pass to get home. Presumably you don't live in Riyadh (and is Utah much different?) As for shipping it home, the safe answer is zero, but others have found licensed merchants who can do it, for some states in the US. Search "winespectator" on this forum. I have written numerous replies on questions like this. Best wishes, Rex

Someone told me that most US customs inspectors don't bother charging duty on a couple of bottles over the allowed limit--not worth the paper work for the small amt. of $$ to be collected. ??

Correct, probably up to 20 (50?) bottles. I have actually never heard of anyone paying ANY duty to U.S. Customs on wine. Thre are, however stories of confiscating and destroying ALL the alcoholic beverages being brought in - - not just wine. Bottom line, the U.S. government is not particularly concerned about tourists who bring back alcoholic beverages. The ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Commission) folks from certain states might. the commerce of alcohol in the US is largely state-controlled. And it doesn't always seem consistent. I believe that you could bring in as much booze as you can carry into an airport in Ohio (Cleveland, for example now has non-stop trans-atlantic service). But you can't open up a store and sell it (hard liquor), no matter how/where you got it. Only the state of Ohio can do that.

You can't ship with UPS or FedEx. They do not have the license

The previous posts are right, I think it depends on where you live. In my view, more importantly, what U.S. (presumably) gateway you come through. If it is an airport with numerous international flights, chances are U.S. customs will be busy with non-U.S. citizens bringing in food, etc. They'll probably be less concerned about U..S. citizens carry a case of wine. (There are restrictions on the amount of alcohol on can come back with.) Twice, we've come back from France with 2 cases that we carried on-board the plane. As we come into Newark, the customs officials had their hands full with flights from Eastern Europe ans Asia. However, we have not been to France since 9/11. They may be less willing to look the other-way in these situations.

why in the world would you go thru all that hassle when you can get the same stuff and probaly cheaper at home--why bother to save a few bucks. dumb

We'll be coming home through O'Hare. If anyone knows the specific regulations for Illinois please let us know. Thanks for your input!

Seems like somebody is asking this question just about every day lately. There must be a bunch of winos on board. I only brought home 150 bottles of Burgundy reds and a dozen bottles of various spirits in a container when we relocated back to California from Germany. US Customs had no comment; I think they did not even read the manifest. ;>) Anecdote aside, the official regulations can be found in the US Government booklet "Know Before You Go" which is on line at http://www.customs.ustreas.gov/travel/know.htm. It also answers cheese and sausage questions. www.enjoy-europe.com

Although a little roughly said, wineguy expressed my sentiments exactly.

Lori- You will receive insturctions on board the plane- on the customs card that will tell you how much you can bring into the US without having to pay tax on it- so don't worry. Have a great trip

Lori- We brought 10 bottles of still wine, 4 bottles of liqeurs and 2 bottles of Champagne back last week. I declared them all and customs didn't say anything or make us pay any duty. Last year we had 2 cases shipped from a negoiant in Beaune and paid $26 in customs duty and a $10 fee at American Airlines who brought it in. The negoiant in Beaune included the shipping in the price of the wine which wasn't cheap but much less than the price here if you could even find those wines. If you are going to be in Beaune, email me and I will get you the name and address.

<<You will receive insturctions on board the plane- on the customs card that will tell you how much you can bring into the US without having to pay tax on it>> I'd say generally to ignore this.

Thanks for all your replies.... but has anyone specifically brought wine thru o hare in chicago? Kim

Yes, Kim and Lorie, Last week we brought back a box containing 6 bottles from Paris to O'Hare. The customs agent in Chicago noticed the box, asked what it contained and waved us on-no fuss, no duty paid-they obviously weren't concerned and had other post 9/11 matters to worry about. We purchased the wine, all hard-to-find vintages from the Languedoc-Roussillon unavailable in the US, at a delightful wine store in the 6th, called Derniere Goutte, owned by Juan Sanchez, an American from Miami, who also co-owns the restaurant "Fish la Boissonerie" on the Rue de Seine, around the corner. His shop is well known in the Paris Anglo community (featured in last spring's Gourmet and Bon A) for its nice collection of southwestern wines at very reasonable prices. For 9.4 euros more, we purchased a sturdy La Poste box specially made for shipping wines, and we simply checked it along with our bags. We did meet some initial hesitation from the American airlines agent at CDG, but Juan was insistent we could ship this without mishap, Patti, his helper, packed it extremely well and told us we could bring back as much as we could carry without being charged duty (his customers do this regularly), so the agent marked it fragile, and all was well. We checked it again on our connecting flight from O'Hare to our home. If we had known how simple this was going to be, we might have bought another box of 6 wines and checked it as well, as we were traveling with only 1 bag a piece. Hope this helps answer your question.