Maribel wrote<BR>&gt;[We purchased wine and shopped it]home with our luggage in the 10 euro La Poste container that we bought there and used to ship last year. &lt;<BR><BR> Please tell us more about the container and how you shipped it.<BR><BR> Thanks<BR>

Hi Ira,<BR>We purchased the cardboard La Poste box, specially designed for shipping 6 bottles of wine, at &quot;la Derniere Goutte&quot; wine shop on tiny 6 Rue de Bourbon-le-Chateau, near rue de Seine in the 6th (have only seen it there, but maybe Nicolas sells one too-we didn't look for it at a post office). Patti Currie, the owner, Juan Sanchez's friendly and super nice helpmate, promised us on a previous trip that we could check the box in along with our luggage (we had only 1 suitcase each to check in). This box holds the 6 bottles very tightly packed and protected with more cardboard cut-outs inside, and it survived the trip just fine. In the past it's gone as far as Seattle. Patti and Juan have never had a complaint about it, and once again, they were right. Juan uses it to take wine back to Miami all the time. They also sell a styrofoam (?) 6 bottle box for half the price that's to be used for carrying on the plane, but definitely not for checking in.<BR>Both last yr. and this Thurs., when we checked our luggage at CDG, the agent looked askew when she saw the wine box and said, oh, too fragile, but we insisted that it would be o.k., and indeed it was. When we went through customs at PHL, the customs agent simply asked us what the box contained, then waved us through.<BR>Hope that answers your question.

Thank you for your reply, Maribel.

A second vote for the box and its inserts from Derniere Goutte. The container and its contents arrived safe and sound, and we'll be taking the container back with us on our next trip (for refills!).<BR>

Ira,<BR>Forgot to mention that you can read a bit about the shop at<BR>www.vineyardstars.com/lilshops.htm<BR><BR>Patricia Wells has Juan to do the wine tasting segments of her cooking classes both in Paris on the rue Jacob and in Provence. He specializes in the undervalued wines of the southwest, although the shop carries wines from all regions.