Travelling with wine: sending wine to Australia, part one

I’m currently undergoing my first attempt to post wine to Australia from Italy which could prove to be a hilarious exercise in showing that the Italians, unfortunately, are really a disorganised race.

I believe Italy is a country unparalleled in its rich offering of wines – it has truly everything, not always at high quality but if you go exploring, you will find some real wine gems in Italy. So the first step, and the hardest, was deciding what to send.

I settled with a slightly eclectic and simple mix that wasn’t too expensive, bearing in mind I couldn’t guarantee that it wouldn’t be confiscated by Australian customs. So currently sitting in Alexandria airport, Sydney are a couple of bottles of Greco di Tufo and Taurasi, grape varieties of Greco and Aglianico from Campania; and a couple of bottles of Valtellina nebbiolo as that’s my home ground in Italy.

You may think I wasted my choice, but I believe they will still be appreciated and as they’re destined for under the Christmas tree (or in the cellar where they probably won’t stay for long), we’re about drinking and sharing here, not impressing. Depending on success, more significant bottles may be destined for future shipment.

Australian customs has done the usual routine enquiries regarding alcohol shipments and here’s hoping that they wines will soon be released to the family. In which case, the shipment to Australia via Italian post/FedEx was simpler than the shipment of the wines from Campania to Milan. Why? Because the first transporter got the address wrong.

They decided to ignore all instructions and instead of delivering to my house, delivered to English school I used to work at in the same building who, luckily knowing me, decided to sign for the wine anyway. My former colleagues then forgot to inform me that six bottles of wine were sitting on the classroom floor, and I came across them one evening when I popped in to say hello.

The response from the transporter: when were they going to get around to telling me as they had their entire network searching for the whereabouts of the wine...? My response: perhaps you should have delivered them to the correct address in the first place. On my pointing this out, the guy on the phone politely wished me a pleasant evening, and promptly hung up. Episode two on the eventual whereabouts of the wine will continue this week.