cookiestar

What's the situation with bringing in bottles of alcohol to Australia in your container? I have 2 bottles of vintage champagne and a bottle of wine left over from our wedding (keeping it for sentimental reasons) that I want to bring into the country. Is this possible if we declare them on the inventory? I'm happy to pay import tax on them (providing it's not a ridiculous amount) - anyone any ideas what the charge would be? If not I'll just have to drink them all now (we've been working our way slowly and steadily through the drinks cabinet to get rid of everything )

Tubbs2Oz

I was laughing when I first read your post, then realised that my youngest was given a bottle of port for his christening to keep for his 18th!! I will wait for someone to tell you for sure, but I'd say 2 bottles is well within the normal duty free limit especially with two of you going. And you have already paid duty on them just in the UK.

GaryVFR8

I brought in three bottles of whisky in my boxes which came over here, I decleared them but did not get charged anything by customs, So I would say it would be OK. But check with your shipping company. I used Sevenseas.
Gary

cookiestar

Cool. I'll ask the shipping companies when they come round to quote.

It is funny Tubbs. I've had these 2 bottles of champagne (one of Cristal 1996and one of Dom Perignon 1998) for years now. One will possibly be drunk when we get the visa, but I don't want to drink them just for the sake of it. The wedding wine is probably vinegar by now (9 years on) but it's such a pretty bottle and comes from the same region that my dad does - so doubly sentimental.

Pollyana

Bring it, declare it, Customs may charge you duty on it but then as long as the bottles are unopened they will allow it in.

cookiestar

Thanks. I was pretty sure it was ok, but then someone else I know mentioned that they had to bin all of their alcohol when they were moving to and from the States. It got me wondering.

kar-kier

We brought in a bottle of vodka (a present in a fancy blue bottle) and a bottle of rum we got on our honeymoon. We declared and we charged $25 for each bottle.


Kareena

cookiestar

That's useful to know. Thanks.

Sally Simpson

We brought 2 bottles of port, both Christening gifts, they were declared but not charged for!

ramlmmjem

That's helpful. I've got some malt whiskies which are investments (a couple of bottles are currently going for £200 each on ebay!) so I want to keep them for my pension!

Alistair

Sally Simpson

Need to point out that my OH says I am incorrect in this & that we were charged duty!

Kooky.

Couldn't you just bring it in with you as your Duty Free Allowance? IIRC it's 2.25l per adult.

We had tons of bottles of spirits leftover from parties I used to host for an internet group I ran, and we brought the decent unopened ones in that way...several times.

cookiestar

Ours are getting packed this week by the shippers. I'd rather pay duty on them than take up precious space in hold/hand luggage. I'll declare them on the forms.

Kooky.

Fair enough - we didn't have much of a luggage issue due to repeated trips over.

Kalenge

We decided to bring over whatever alcohol that we had in our cabinet. We had some fairly good vintage wines, so we thought if we brought them we may as well bring the lot ... which included both opened and unopened bottles of wine, belgian beers, and spirits. Probably about 25 bottles in total.

Once our container arrived in Oz we were contacted and asked to provide accurate estimates on how many milliliters were in each bottle. We had only written 1/2 full, 3/4s full etc on the inventory form. We ended up looking up bottle sizes on the internet so that we could provide the required estimates which really seemed a bit over the top.

We ended up paying a fair bit - can't remember how much, but it was the only item in our 40ft container that they focussed on which we were quite happy about. We had some other items which we were expecting to be challenged on, but we suspect that because we were upfront about the alcohol they spent all their time on that and didn't seem to bother with the rest.