Packing & Shipping Wine Bottles Across the Country
This article is going to focus in its entirety on shipping wine in the United States market, and while there may be some tips that will benefit other people across the world it is important to mention this from the start. The Box Zone has been shipping wine across the country for many many years.
Can You Ship Wine?
One of the reasons for this is that it is actually illegal to ship alcohol via the U.S. Postal service across state lines. How many people can honestly put their hand on their heart and say that they knew this, most people are blissfully unaware of that rather important fact. But, this only applies to the U.S. postal service, which means that you can make use of private carriers, like FedEx and UPS, to transport alcohol across state lines, but each vendor has their own specific rules and regulations you need to abide by.
For more information on this, call us or visit either Fedex or UPS websites, but the basic rules are that both the shipper and the recipient have to be licensed dealers, wholesalers, or distributors, manufacturers or importers, and you must enter into specific agreements with the transport companies. In saying all of that, the punishment should you be caught is minimal. In essence, you lose the alcohol, so unless you are shipping $150 bottles of champagne, the risk is fairly inconsequential.
To Survive the Trip, You Must Pack Your Bottles Carefully
The biggest risk when shipping wine of beer is the bottles smashing against each other during transit causing breakages. There 
are special wine bottle boxes that work great. As well as ensuring that there is sufficient padding and packaging between the bottles, try and stabilize each bottle to prevent them from moving around in the first place. Always try and use materials that will absorb any leakages, so that if one bottle breaks the contents don’t start leaking out of the box. That is when the transportation company will remove the box, and you will most likely lose everything. While is it not ideal to have even one bottle break, at least you are minimizing the damage.
There is no need to inform Fedex or UPS what exactly it is that you are shipping. In the many years that we have shipped alcohol around the country, we have never been asked, so rather than cause unnecessary complications.
We Recommend a Professional Packer
Prepare properly, by ensuring you have significant and proper packing materials to hand before you start packing the bottles. We speak from experience here, but if you don’t have enough materials the temptation just to use anything close to hand to get rid of the alcohol and get the job done, may prove too great. But the frustration and disappointment you are risking, if and when the bottles do break is not worth the risk. Remove the temptation by preparing properly. If you can’t handle this yourself then make sure to bring your wine to us and let a professional packing company handle this for you.
Rather than try and explain how to pack and ship your beer or wine safely, the best option is to show you a video of the process. This gives you a visual example and something that is much easier to follow, in my humble opinion. Here is the best video that shows the process properly.
