Worth a trip to Cherbourg for cheap beer/wine?

I've seen some brief mentions of such a trip on the forum, and there's not much coming up having done a search.

I'm thinking of doing this with a car or van on the October bank holiday. There's an Irish Ferries trip for €250 designed especially for this kind of thing.

Has anyone here done such a thing? And was it worth it? Or should I just blag a Cash&Carry card and save the travel?

Any thoughts, comments, experiences would be appreciated.

Some wines can be significantly cheaper alright. I believe if you bring back more than 10 cases that you may be asked to proove it's for personal consumption in order to avoid excise. Find links of a couple of the shops near the port and check out their prices. Many of these places will take advance orders, so will have everything there ready for you when you arrive.

I called into a few of these places on the way back to Roscoff after a driving holiday a couple of years ago. I have links to a coupe of places there, and you can get the likes of Guigal's Cote Du Rhone for less than €7 a bottle, it's about €12.50 here! You're not going to save that much on beer, better off with stocking up on the supermarket special offers.
Leo

Agreed. Up North for beer, o'er the sea only for significant quantities of good wine (or better still Champagne/Cognac, etc.)

Curious now.....

.... would be perfect coming up to Chrimbo.

Where did you see the 250 deal?

see this and other threads on the Wineroom for info on buying wine in La belle France.....

[broken link removed]

Cash and carring aint much cheaper for beer in my experience that the offers in your local off licence...

I'm going over in two weeks time, getting all my wine & sparking wine for my wedding, will let you know how I get on. Bit worried about weight... Should a renault megane 1.6 be able to take 15/20 cases of wine????

France is definitely great value for wine, but I recommend you avoid most wine "warehouses" in Cherbourg, who stock overpriced poor quality wine. Most of the names you won't even recognise.

I took the trip last year through Cherbourg --> Bordeaux --> Loire Valley --> Paris --> Cherbourg.

The irish ferries boat was far from luxurious, and is by far the lowlight of the trip!

However, the supermarket leclerc is fantastic for wine (and you can find staff that are extremely knowledgeable and offer loads of advice). There is one in Cherbourg, but it's a grim port town and is best to head further a fields, for example Nantes. I bought most of my wine there last October. They also have an annual wine sale in late sept / early october, similar to Superquinn's november wine sale, with reductions in vin d'pays to the cru classe wines. Remember though, supermarkets in France don't open Sundays.

http://www.e-leclerc.com

All in all a great trip.

Mac.

p.s. as for the beer - I'd head to lidl

Took 250 bottles back in an Audi A4 saloon. you'll have no probs but don't buy much else!

You would want to be bringing back an awful lot of alcohol to get back the €250. Its probably more of an adventure than a money saving exercise. It probably makes sense for people living in the South of England where the trip to calais is fairly cheap. Having said that I'd say if a bus company set up a bus trip to france for this purpose they would do well.

You're entitled to up to 90 litres of wine per person ( over 17) ( of which 60 litres of sparkling wine), which at approx 75 cl a bottle, means about 120 bottles of ordinary wine per person. Mr.V and I regularly go to France- at least once or twice a year to visit relatives and usually stock up on the way home. As Mac said, I would avoid the wine supermarkets near the ferry- and anything around Cherbourg or Roscoff- instead to to the nearest large city and find an E Leclerc- or if there is a wine fair at another supermarket, try there. There are wine specialists in all the larger supermarkets and they will let you taste if you are buying a large quantity and will give recommendations- we have yet to be steered wrongly. I think it is worth it as if you buy 240 bottles, you will save a good amount. At one memorable wine fair we picked up 7 cases of chateau neuf du pape at approx €9 per bottle ( which would retail here at a minimum of €20 and more like €25). A case has 6 bottles. Work that out! Also its easy enough to pick a wine in France- they will be labelled with gold and silver and bronze medals for prize winning wines and someone once told me that if you look for a label where it says bottled by the vineyard it can be a good sign as it means the vineyard is proud of that wine. But we don't just buy bottles at €9 or €10, I like muscadet ( not very fashionable I know)- and you can get a very nice bottle for maybe €3 or €4 or even less- I doubt you could pick up a gold medal muscadet for less than €7 here. And I also like mousseaux, again not very fashionable ( and of course champagne is nicer) but it is very cheap. Although Aldi do a nice one at the moment too.

Vanilla said:

You're entitled to up to 90 litres of wine per person ( over 17)

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This is a limit imposed by Irish customs or their French counterparts?

(The reason I ask is that I would find it strange if it were an Irish limit given our legal age for buying booze in this country is 18?????)

Hi Ccovich, think about it. Over 17 IS 18 !

By the way, I suppose whether you are really saving by going to France and buying wine really depends on whether you would be buying the same amount of wine in Ireland anyway. I.e. we bought chateauneuf du pape, but would we have bought it had we been at home? Doubtful...

Vanilla said:

Hi Ccovich, think about it. Over 17 IS 18 !

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Not necessarily, but anyway (technically 17 years 3 monhs is over 17, the same way as someone who is 18 years an 1 day is over 18). Given that the legal age for purchasing alcohol is 18 (and not over 17) I would have thought that it was more accurate to say that:

You're entitled to up to 90 litres of wine per person ( as long as you're 18 or older)

True, good point. I was quoting the Oasis guide which says over 17...

Lastwe travelled to France, we brought a trailer back due to V Jnr.s accoutrements, and I only narrowly persuaded Mr.V that we couldnt bring back an allowance for V Jnr too ( who is nowhere near 18..).

Vanilla said:

True, good point. I was quoting the Oasis guide which says over 17...

Lastwe travelled to France, we brought a trailer back due to V Jnr.s accoutrements, and I only narrowly persuaded Mr.V that we couldnt bring back an allowance for V Jnr too ( who is nowhere near 18..).

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That's good responsible parenting . Shame on Mr. V for even thinking of such a scheme........

I'll take the 17/18 age thing up with the government (or whoever it is that runs OASIS) .

Im travelling to Cherbourg on Sunday 2nd Oct with Irish Ferries €490 including cabins and van for 2 people. Im having problems finding a difinitive answer to whether the 90 litres is per person. In some places it says that a group travelling together cannot pool allowances. Has anyone got a definite answer to this. Even the Revenue cant give me a straight answer. The Normandie Wine warehouse has an excellent range of top class wines at good prices so why are people saying to avoid these instead of supermarkets. Generally supermarkets stock the cheaper lesser quality wines. Ill let you know it I get stopped by customs.

philip o said:

Im travelling to Cherbourg on Sunday 2nd Oct with Irish Ferries €490 including cabins and van for 2 people. Im having problems finding a difinitive answer to whether the 90 litres is per person. In some places it says that a group travelling together cannot pool allowances. Has anyone got a definite answer to this. Even the Revenue cant give me a straight answer. The Normandie Wine warehouse has an excellent range of top class wines at good prices so why are people saying to avoid these instead of supermarkets. Generally supermarkets stock the cheaper lesser quality wines. Ill let you know it I get stopped by customs.

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If you get split the purchase in 2 and get two dockets , you own one your friend owns the then not grouped and no problem.
Myself and my brother went last weekend roslare to roscoff 2 person cabin and estate car with roof box( which we didn't need as it worked out)only cost a little ove 200 . so your 490 seems dear.
BYTW if you go into the Geant supermarket will u pick me up 5/10 of the boxes of drill bits over 200 for 29.99. I will sort you out when you come back.

We have completed about 5 trips at this stage. On our biggest trip we brought back 360 botles of wine in the back of the car (wedding). The front of the car was pointing at the clouds as there was that much weight in the back.

None of our group were ever stopped by customs, and over the 5 trips that is approximately 30 different vehicles that would have passed by the customs.

The best value is in the Hypermarkets - Carrefour, Auchan or Leclerc. The other warehouses are more expensive than the hypermarkets.
The wines from the hypermarkets are of equally good quality and in some instances better that the warehouse.

The wine is significantly cheaper than at home and if you take out the travelling costs you are obviously making a saving. We look at the trip as a bit of a mini holiday and don't include the cost of the travel in the overall pricing.

It is always good fun if you travel with a few. It is a bit funny loading the checkout belt with only wine bottles and the boat rip over and back is always a good session.

Thanks for all the responses/comments. Still kind of undecided after that. My main focus would have been beer.