Great Bottle Journeys
Wine wrapped in bubble wrap and duct tape. Olive oil slipped into a tube sock. Hot sauce tucked into a t-shirt. The lengths people go to in hopes of protecting their liquid treasures for a safe fllight home are boundless. Some are ingenious, some unsuccessful and some downright comical. What’s your BottleWise TravelSmart story?
Fellow Traveler Stories...
Could have used this product last year
My husband bought several bottles of tequila on our last cruise. He wrapped one of the bottles up in my clothes and stuck it in my suitcase. Once home I discovered EVERYTHING in my suitcase soaked in tequila. It was a disaster. I still find chards of glass in the far reaches of my suitcase. We could have used this product last year. This is a great idea!
-Jennifer and Niels Thompson
Melbourne, VIC
A Bottle Made me Do It!
There's nothing like a good problem to inspire a useful product. A few months ago I was stumped when a business colleague in Melbourne handed me two fine bottles of wine from his family vineyard the day before my flight back to the US. Acutely aware of the inbound TSA restrictions of carrying bottles in hand luggage (a month before, I had made a charitable contribution of an expensive bottle of perfume that should have made it to my wife!), I started to worry about placing the Merlot inside my duffel rider with three-weeks's worth of business clothing. I zipped around to several booze shops to see if I could find a suitable container to protect the precious cargo but cam up empty handed. Plenty of bags but nothing that could promise a spill-free ride. I resorted to jury-rig my own seal-safe contraption from a half-dozen cellophane produce bags and tape from a local grocery store. A full afternoon later, I had my precious bottles liquid sealed - I hoped - and ready for flight.
I have to admit I remained nervous the entire way. With 4 airports and connections, I worried through the trip that my liquid cargo would crack or ooze its way out to the clothes. On the long transpacific flight I committed the problem to paper and started working up a design for a new kind of bottle carrier. Something light and compact that protected the bottle but kept it from leaking if it broke. My bottles did get home safely but a half dozen Google searches later, I had discovered a gap. With the literally hundreds of bottle bags and carriers on the market, nothing fit the requirements, Naturally, being the inventive type, I proceeded to design and build one of my own. Friends and family - especially the traveling aficionados - convinced us that the Bag deserved a company around it. So we got one started and a new smarter bottle carrier came to be. Problem solved. And peace and harmony to all bottle travelers.
-James Dias, BottleWise founder
Madison, WI
Famous Last Words
Last October, my company held its sales meeting in San Francisco and our big team bonding activity was a trip to Napa Valley. Very cool, especially for flatlanders like me who don’t get to California often. The only problem was our wine tour package included a bottle of wine, and thanks to the new TSA rules, I couldn’t put it in my carry-on bag. After having such a great wine country experience, I reallllly wanted to bring the bottle home. It was my special souvenir and I wanted to share it with my poor husband who was left home alone with the kids all week. Against my better judgment I listened to all my colleagues who said “Just wrap it up in some clothes and it will be fine. I do it all the time and never had a problem.” Sure, famous last words. Unfortunately, my Pinot Noir Reserve was not so lucky. It didn’t survive the journey. Lesson learned.
-Katie
Sydney, NSW
Crying Over Spilled Malt
While traveling overseas, I purchased a bottle of chocolate malt drink mix – the only kind that my daughter drinks, and placed it into our suitcase wrapped only in a grocery bag. I was planning to pack it securely before heading back to the US but in our rush to the airport, I forgot to do so. We arrived home in Pittsburgh only to find that the bottle had leaked, damaging most of the clothes and the suitcase. My wife had taken expensive silks to have them dry-cleaned overseas and they were all ruined. I wish we had BottleWise to save us.
- Krishna
Adelaide, SA
Still Waiting
A friend and I travelled to Rome earlier this year and I was insistent as a passionate wine consumer, never to let anything get in the way of my wine enjoyment in bringing back a few bottles of wine in my baggage. I picked up a few bottles, including some olive oil and balsamic and emailed a friend for advise on the best way to safely pack bottles in a suitcase. He sent me the following thesis:
"When packing the wine bottles in your suitcase the important thing is to prevent the bottles from shifting around and getting banged against something hard enough to break the bottle. What I do first is slip each bottle into a sock, and then roll that up in a dirty undershirt. You can use any sort of clothing to do this, but you might consider getting some inexpensive athletic socks just for this purpose. I never wrap the bottles in any piece of clothing I would not want to get ruined if a bottle did break.
Next, I use a plastic bag, usually the laundry bag provided by the hotel, and put as many of the wrapped bottles in it as will fit snuggly side by side. You can use small plastic trash bags as well. Then I fold the top of the plastic bag over and tape the package securely with clear cellophane type packing tape, which I either take with me or buy locally. I make sure the package is sealed so that if a bottle did break any liquid not absorbed by the socks and clothing will not leak out.
Now you have a sort of wine mummy that is all trussed up and ready for burial in your luggage. The idea is to isolate and insulate the wine on all sides as much as possible, particularly on the sides with the least protection, that is, the broad, flat sides of the bag. This includes both soft-sided and rigid luggage. I would discourage the use of luggage that does not have some kind of rigid frame, such as duffle bags, for transporting wine.
Most suitcases these days have wheels that dictate their vertical orientation, and it is important to position the wine parallel with the vertical axis of the suitcase. That is, orient the bottles so that the bottom of the bottles face the bottom of the bag in its normal upright position. But, first, you want to put things like shoes at the very bottom of the bag just above the wheels, and put down several layers of clothes in the sides of the bag. Position your wine mummy so that the bottom of the wine bottles rest on top of the shoes or other padding that will absorb shock from that direction. Then surround the wine package on all sides with clothes and a final couple of layers of clothes on top before you close the bag. Give the suitcase a few good shakes to make sure the wine package can not move around and come into contact with any of the sides of the suitcase"
I decided I would skip the hassle and the risk of carrying the bottles in my suitcase and went to Fedex and was told that my items would be shipped overnight, safely and securely. In any case more than 100 euro later, we're still waiting for that package to arrive!
- Vincent
Boston, MA
Precious Brain Fuel
I've always liked Red Bull. I don't know what that flavor is nor can I really vouch for it giving me wings. When Red Bull took off in the US, hundreds of other energy drinks showed up on store shelves. Could there be something better than Red Bull out there? My coworkers and I had to find out.
We started buying any and all drinks we could find and casually rating them. None were any match for Red Bull. Times turned tough, tech companies crumbled, coworkers went in other directions, energy drinks were no longer rated. Jump ahead five years and here we are rating drinks again.
Some months I travel a lot, others not so much. However, now when I travel I am always on the lookout for that new, unique and unsampled energy drink that you can find at some hole in the wall gas station in the middle of nowhere. And when you discover gems like El Caballo Negro in Redwood City, CA or Crimson Tide in Madison, AL, you need to take extra care to get those energy drinks back to Madison, WI so that the team can taste and rate.
Energy drinks don't travel as well as one might think. A lot of times the local versions are packaged in very cheap aluminum cans that simply don't handle the pressure changes in the airplane cargo hold. Being a big wine drinker, I've traveled with wine all over the place and have tried everything from the plastic hotel laundry bag to wrapping in dirty laundry to stealing towels and such for extra padding. I've tried all of these methods with my new habit and still come home to a dripping suitcase all too often.
I look forward to putting the BottleWise Duo to the energy drink test. I have no doubt that my suitcase, pocketbook and coworkers will be thankful for keeping the precious brain fuel contained and intact.
- Jiggs Mann
Perth, WA