hello All,

I hear stories about people going on the booze cruise from England to France
and I am interested in whether any of you guys have any comments to make on
it?

Is the value really what people say it is? (bottles of nice wine for 2-5
euro per bottle)
Can I get a website to ship to me in Ireland
Is it worth doing or should I try to incorporate it into a holiday

I was thinking about trying to stock up prior to Christmas and I would be
grateful for your opinions and comments

PS, a normal bottle of wine in the supermarket is ten euro in Ireland, I
know that there is no such thing as normal, but hopefully you know what I
mean.

Thanks for you help


--
Best Regards



Mark L. Breen
Ireland

Salut/Hi Mark L. Breen,

I live in France, so have never had the need to go on a booze cruise -
except to pick up good value Australian, New Zealand, Argentinian, Chilean,
German, Spanish or Italian wines in the UK. However, I can answer some of
your queries.

le/on Tue, 18 Nov 2003 23:41:31 -0000, tu disais/you said:-

>Is the value really what people say it is? (bottles of nice wine for 2-5
>euro per bottle)

Well much depends upon your definition of "nice". I buy a Bergerac wine in a
Bag in Box at ‚¬2.50 a litre from the producer, which I serve to my B&B
customers, and which I drink with great pleasure. It's not great wine, but
it trickles down a treat. A good Cahors costs of the order of ‚¬8 and a very
good one ‚¬12. Bordeaux are horribly overpriced, wherever you go, but on the
tarif I received from a lesser known producer, his top wine is ‚¬15 and was
really impressive. My local plonk, a delicious Vin de Pays de Côteaux de
Glanes costs me ‚¬3 a bottle, but they are now refusing to sell except to
existing clients, because they are perpetually selling out!

>Can I get a website to ship to me in Ireland

In principle, yes, though you may find shipping and customs charges
complicate things to the extent that some growers are unwilling to do so.
You would probably have to look for a site which specifically says they do.

>Is it worth doing or should I try to incorporate it into a holiday

Living in ireland will complicate matters, though I've no idea how much. The
economics (as I understand them) of the booze cruise, is that a cheap day
return for a van + 2 passengers on the short sea crossing can be VERY cheap.
A day's van hire is also pretty reasonable. So people living in SE England
hire a van, pop across the channel, invade the local stupormarkup and stock
up their van. They then have a nice meal out and pop back across that
evening. The down side is that I have very rarely found a wine that I
consider to be better than marginally drinkable in a French Stupormarkup.
That said, Auchan (one of the biggest French chains of hypers) does have a
HUMUNGOUS wine cellar just outside Paris, where as I understand it, they
sell some better wines.

When I used to live in the UK, I did occasionally combine wine buying with
my holiday, and on one memorable occasion returned with about 14 cases of
top class wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy and the Rhone. This was before
Schenghen, and so I went through the red channel and duly paid my duty and
VAT (shall we call it 50p a litre, sir?)

>PS, a normal bottle of wine in the supermarket is ten euro in Ireland,

Gulp!! For that price I can get some very serious wines from lesser well
known areas.

Hope this helps a little.

--
All the Best
Ian Hoare

Sometimes oi just sits and thinks
Sometimes oi just sits.