blueRussell

Can anyone help?

I have a collection of wine I want to take to Canada when my wife & I move in June? There are only about 27 bottles at the moment (though I may be able to reduce this number ) but they are quite valuable.

As they are far too good to offer to any guests that may visit our new house I can assure any customs official that they will be for personal use only.

Will I be liable for any import duty?

Cheers

Russ…

Craftybanshee

I'm not entirely sure, but I thought I read on here a while ago that there is a tax of some kind for importing liquor. I'm sure someone who knows the answer will post soon.

I'm sure some of us could help you out with dispensing of your collection if need be

Judy in Calgary

You are allowed to import 1.5 litres of wine duty free.

If you do bring it, I suspect you'll need to bring it in your checked luggage, in the hold of the plane. I have never heard of removalists who have been willing to ship liquids.

On a travel discussion forum on which I participate I have seen posts by travellers who have had suitcases that have been specially fitted for the purpose of carrying wine bottles. They use some sort of material -- I forget what, maybe styrofoam -- to prevent the bottles from banging against each other during the flight.

There's a link to the relevant Canadian government website in the Goods To Follow article in the BE Wiki.

Oakvillian

I'm sure there's a rule somewhere that says you will be charged excise duty or some such, but in practice it all depends on your customs agent and how good they are feeling about the world on the day they clear your shipment. We had the contents of a drinks cabinet and about two dozen or so bottles of wine in our container, declared as such on the manifest (along the lines of "boxes xxx-yyy, assorted wines and spirits, 40 bottles, some opened") and nobody batted an eyelid...

Oakvillian

Allied Pickfords. It didn't even come up in conversation as a potential problem.

Mountain Girl

Ok so you leave in June thats roughly 10 weeks away ........ so only 2.7 bottles a week to get through .

gloveman

All the shipping companies we have had in have said booze on the container is a definite no no.

Judy in Calgary

Maybe the Canadian destination and the time of year are relevant.

The day the removalists packed our household goods onto a Houston-bound truck on a December 1995 day, the temperature was -32 deg C. Naturally they had to keep a door into/out of the house open, and it got cold inside. We had to wear our parkas and winter boots indoors, and we had to keep taps trickling so that the water in the pipes wouldn't freeze.

From Houston we moved to Melbourne, and then we returned to Calgary in January 2000.

Neither during our winter move out of Calgary nor during our winter move back to Calgary would any removalists discuss the topic of including wine in our shipments.

I see blueRussell is moving to Ottawa in June, so that probably bodes well.

Cookie

We brought over 1 litre of Vodka and a malt whisky in our container and was charged approx 15 GBP cos OH declared it

Souvenir

The shippers that moved us didn't seem at all worried about roughly 150 bottles of wine and spirits.......

Butch Cassidy

If you declare it all yes.

Butch Cassidy

Judy,

We moved from UK in Feb.
Goods arrived march\april.
Shipment contained the permited amount of alcohol (oh and a 'little' more as well)

woodmanbg

All the removal companies we dealt with also said taking booze was a no no, so my advice is to have a good party and treat all those friends that you will not be seeing for some time, after all 27 bottles wont go far (or at least not in this house, certainly wouldnt last a month!!!!

The TWs

This is amazing - how did you do it?

OH has a small wine cellar and whiskey collection that we wanted to bring over but were told no. I also checked with the BC liquor board and was told the import duty would be rediculously high.

I'm dying to know how you did it - this would make us incredibly happy!

(Not to mention stop us from being impoverished by our wine habit - paid $40 for a £7 bottle of wine last time we were there!!!)

fuschiagirl

Have you any idea what the import duty would be? We've got some wine we would like to bring and would consider paying the duty. We'll have to start our own vineyard - it's the only solution! The price of wine is one of the very few drawbacks to Canada IMO!