Some wine lovers like to travel with their own glassware, especially to a vacation rental where the glassware is often suboptimal or missing altogether. You might be thinking, “Really? Do people actually travel with wine glassware?”
Yep, they sure do. But to be fair, traveling with glassware is often more about being prepared for unknown situations than it is about being a snob. In fact, if you are prepared in advance for a trip to wine country, you will also be prepared to safely bring back souvenir wine glasses from your favorite wineries.
Before we continue with our wine glass travel case reviews, though, a little about the KnowWines blog. We’re an Amazon.com affiliate and we do receive a small commission if you purchase items through our affiliate links at no cost to you. The commissions help us pay for web hosting fees, products to test, and other costs associated with running this site. Thank you for using our affiliate links and supporting this independent blog!
Why Bring Your Own Glassware?
Benefits of Bringing Your Own Glassware
When you rent a house on AirBnB or stay at a relative’s home, you don’t know what the wine glass situation will be.
If your reputation as a budding wine enthusiast precedes you, your host may be expecting a knock-out wine experience as a benefit of an invite. If you are going to share wine with a partner or friends/family in a new locale, it helps to be prepared with quality wine glasses.
Here are a few things we’ve run into over the years when it comes to wine glass inventory at rental homes:
Dirty wine glasses. Gross! Glasses might be dirty from days or months of non-use, or they may be hazy from too many cycles in the dishwasher.
Cheap, thick-rimmed wine glasses or wine glasses with too much “personality” (over-use of hand lettering, glue gun art, or extravagant laser edging). Nothing takes the fun out of wine tasting more than drinking a special wine out of a “Mommy’s Sippy Cup” wine glass.
No wine glasses at all. Perhaps the HomeAway host does not offer wine glasses for personal reasons, thinking it might cut down on partying or save them the trouble of replacing broken wine glases.
Bringing your own wine glass can eliminate the need to stop and buy new wine glasses or hunt down extra strength cleaner to remove dust or even dead flies!
Downsides of Bringing Your Own Glassware
While there are several upsides to bringing your own glassware, there are some downsides, including the following:
Bringing your own glassware takes up valuable space in your luggage.
Glassware could break in transit.
You might accidentally leave behind your glassware at the rental.
Bringing Your Own Wine Glasses on an Airplane
In the United States, you can bring empty wine glasses on the airplane. We recommend that you already have the wine glasses packed away safely in your hand luggage using any one of the methods we share below. If you’re planning a trip to wine country, you can also check wine when you fly!
Best Wine Glass Travel Cases
When it comes to wine glass travel cases, there are a few decent products on the market.
However, when possible, we prefer to go the DIY route, reusing household items that might fit the bill, especially when planning a trip to wine country. In this case, we might not need to take any wine glasses on the outbound portion of the trip, but we may need to be prepared in advance for bringing back any souvenir glasses from wineries.
DIY Wine Glass Travel Cases
Pro Tip: Keep the box your wine glasses came in, as it can double as a wine glass travel case! Canisters from wines like tawny port or the boxes that whisky often come in make great travel cases.
Most food-safe storage or pantry containers over 6.5 L can accommodate easily one - if not two - wine glasses. Be sure to measure the length and width of your wine glass(es) to make sure that they will fit.
With any of the DIY approaches, make sure to pad around each wine glass bowl with packing paper or bubble wrap so that the bowls are not clanking against each other in transit.
Riedel Wine Glass Travel Case
This wine glass travel case by Reidel holds three universal wine glasses and standard red (Bordeaux) glasses. Unlike our DIY solutions, this wine glass travel case can hold three to five glasses. And it has a shoulder strap!
This travel case will not hold extra-large glasses like Pinot Noir glass that have a wider bowl. Note that some users indicate that after a year or so that the bag may start to give off plastic or rubbery smell.
Ravenscroft Crystal Ultimate Travel Case
This wine glass travel case is similar in size to the Riedel travel case and is a good option if you don’t want a big brand name on the outside of your bag. It also is fairly compact and will pack easily.
Like the Riedel bag, some users find that oversized wine bowls (like Pinot Noir-specific wine glasses) may not fit in this travel case. Glasses with especially long stems may not either.
In Conclusion
Thanks for reading our review of wine travel bags.
As we discussed, some wine lovers may want to travel with their wine glasses. Reasons for this may include being prepared at an unknown destination that might have unclean glasses (or none at all). Other wine lovers might want to purchase a wine travel case or come up with a DIY wine travel case solution if they are traveling to a wine region and want to bring home souvenir wine glasses.
Wine glass travel cases are certainly optional wine hobbyist accessories. Through the years, we have found that one can often “make do” with solutions like liquor bottle boxes, shipping tubes, pantry tubs, or boxes received as wrapping for purchase or gift.
Whatever solution you choose for your next getaway, we wish you happy travels!
Cheers!