Can i mail alcoholic beverages

Ordering alcohol online shifts the burden of shipping alcohol from the customer to the producer. Whether you're buying liquor or other types of alcohol, ordering online enables you to ship gifts to friends and family, rather than having to ship it yourself. Some countries make importing or exporting alcohol difficult. The European Union often includes bureaucratic policies that slow the process of shipping alcohol, and some Islamic countries do not admit any alcoholic products at all.

To hasten the arrival of alcohol from a trip abroad, simply pack it in your suitcase. This is not illegal, though the bottles should be declared at customs. If you're bringing a bottle back to send to a friend, it can be shipped from within the United States with the proper precautions.

To package the alcohol in your suitcase, place the glass bottle in a self-sealing bag like a zip-close bag, a small dry bag or a bag specifically designed for packing glass bottles. Two plastic bags wrapped tightly around the bottle will also work, but are not spillproof should the bottle break.

Pack the bottles in the center of the suitcase, securely padded by wrapping in soft, thick layers using a sweater or several T-shirts. Keep in mind that smaller bottles work better than larger bottles when packing alcohol in a suitcase. Remember to place hard or structured items, like shoes, away from the bottle to prevent cracks if the items shift during air travel.

Some retailers sell supplies for packing bottles specifically for air travel, such as cardboard boxes with shock-absorbing inserts and bubble wrap. Molly is a freelance journalist and social media consultant. Some of those universal rules? You must advise the carrier your package contains alcohol. A surcharge will be applied to the shipment. And an adult must sign for it. However, there's more that you can do than brush up on these carriers' policies to get booze from Point A to Point B.

And no, we're not talking about sneaking it. Our experts are here to give you tips on getting alcohol from state-to-state and overseas. On the surface, this seems like the easiest shipping method. Without crossing state lines, after all, you won't have to worry about another state putting a stranglehold on your spirits. But there are still local laws to contend with, warns Seth Weinberg , food law and policy professor at Columbia Law School.

But luckily, because you will have to ship directly from the retailer or distributor, "local merchants are expected to know their own rules, and can serve as a great source of quick answers when you are considering buying a gift for someone," Weinberg says. For example, some states may prohibit the shipment of more than one bottle at a time, or how many bottles of alcohol can be shipped to a person each year, says Mahesh Lekkala, owner of New York- and New Jersey-based Wine Legend.

A good retailer will know these rules. When you're sending something closer to home, you have one more shipping option: use alcohol e-commerce sites, such as Drizly or Minibar for example, to mail your friend a congratulatory bottle of wine or a thank-you six-pack of beer by taking advantage of their in-town delivery options, some free.

When your booze crosses state borders, "you need to consider the laws for both the shipping state and the receiving state," says Weinberg. So, for example, if you'd like to send a bottle of wine from a visit along Pennsylvania's wine trail to a relative in Mississippi, don't waste your time or your money.

While it's perfectly legal to mail wine from this northern state, it's also perfectly illegal to receive wine shipments in Mississippi. In other words, Mississippi is not a reciprocal state, a state in which you can receive alcohol shipments from other states or countries, explains Lekkala.

If you are shipping to a retailer, you may be required to pay some taxes or duties on it as well. Everything depends on where you are shipping the whiskey. Alcoholic beverages often come in glass bottles which are significantly more delicate than their plastic counterparts.

For this reason, you need to be especially careful when you are shipping glass wine bottles, beer bottles, or liquor bottles, or shipping liquids in other delicate containers. To safely ship alcoholic beverages, you should use strong cardboard boxes that have trays inside of them that provide sections for each bottle. This will keep the bottles separate and prevent them from smashing into one another. You can also wrap the bottles in bubble wrap for additional safety.

You may want to do this if you are shipping very expensive wine. After that, you can put packing peanuts into the box and then close the top of the box and tape it shut. Then carefully stack the boxes into the truck.

However, these two organizations will only ship to parties who have licenses to receive alcohol. So, you can forget about shipping alcohol directly to consumers with these two carriers. However, if you are in compliance with interstate liquor laws, then you should be able to ship alcohol safely with these two companies to licensed receiving parties. Sign In Register. Less Than Truckload. Full Truckload.

Freight Dictionary. In fact, all the following alcohol-related shipping questions are frequently asked: Is it illegal to ship alcohol? Can you ship beer?

Who ships alcohol? Who ships wine? What states can you legally ship wine to? How to ship wine to a friend?