Shipping
Every lot we sell leaves the same warehouse in Groningen, packed by the same people, to the same standard. Which carrier takes it from there depends on where it is going: PostNL, DPD, FedEx and DHL each have parts of the map they are simply better at, and we have had five years to find out which parts those are.
What it costs depends on where you are and how many bottles are travelling. You can work that out below before you place a single bid — which is very much the point of putting it on a public page.
Four carriers, worldwide
PostNL, DPD, FedEx, DHL
Rates before you bid
Pick your country below
Packed for glass
Double wall, bottle by bottle
Wait and combine
10 weeks of free storage
How we send it
A bottle of whisky is a fragile, heavy, taxable thing that half the world regulates. Shipping it well is less about speed than about never having to guess who is holding it.
No single courier is the best everywhere, so we do not pretend otherwise. Your parcel goes with whichever of our four is genuinely the strongest on the route to your address — packed to the same standard, from the same warehouse, whichever one that turns out to be.
We work with PostNL, DPD, FedEx and DHL, and which of them carries your parcel is our call rather than yours. There is no cheapest-of-the-month tendering behind it: after more than five years of sending whisky out of Groningen we know, in some detail, which carrier performs where.
DHL is strong in Germany and the countries behind it. DPD is the one to have in Scandinavia. FedEx takes anything that has to fly. PostNL handles a great deal of what stays close to home. Those are not marketing claims — they are what several thousand shipments have taught us, and the picture gets adjusted whenever it stops being true.
What does not change is everything around the carrier: one warehouse, one packing standard, one customs procedure and one tracking number that works from our door to yours.
We ship to as many countries as the law allows, and the list is shorter than we would like: alcohol import rules, not our preferences, decide it. If your country does not appear in the selector below, we cannot send whisky there.
That is worth checking before you get attached to a lot rather than after you have won it. An alternative delivery address in a country we do ship to is always an option, and plenty of buyers use one.
Rates are quoted per slot. A slot is a standard bottle of about two kilos packed, so for most lots one bottle is one slot and the arithmetic is as simple as it looks.
Bigger bottles and tall presentation boxes take up more than one, and a Macallan Folio is the example everybody meets first — it counts as two. Where we know a lot will need extra room, we say so in the lot description.
Bottles you have won can stay with us free of charge for 10 weeks, which covers at least two more auctions. Regular buyers let their wins pile up and then send everything in one box.
The saving is real: six bottles in one shipment cost a fraction of six shipments of one. You decide when it goes, from the storage page in your account.
What it will cost you
Rates are grouped by zone and by the number of slots in the box, so the table below is the complete price list for your destination rather than a quote for one parcel. Read down it to see what a second or a sixth bottle actually adds.
Only the countries we can legally ship whisky to are listed here.
Estimates assume a standard bottle of roughly two kilos packed, which is one slot. Heavier bottles and larger presentation boxes take up more than one, and the price moves with the slots rather than with the bottle count.
A Macallan Folio, for instance, counts as two purely because of its size. Wherever we know that in advance, it is written into the lot description.
| Bottles / slots | Weight | Price |
|---|---|---|
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Select a destination to see the rates. Every country we ship to has its own zone, and the whole table for that zone appears here. |
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These rates are averages rather than a quotation. They assume a full box — the maximum number of bottles we can safely fit — and once that is reached the shipment is split into a second box, which the calculation charges for as a second parcel.
Because it works on averages and runs automatically, it can happen that your bottles turn out to fit in fewer boxes than you were charged parcels for. The reverse can happen too. We would rather tell you that here than have you find it on a packing slip.
All rates are exclusive of VAT. VAT is added at the rate of the country we are delivering to, and excise duty for your country is charged separately again.
How it travels
Nobody packs carefully because a manual says so. They pack carefully because they have once opened a return and found forty-year-old whisky in the bottom of a box. This is what we do to every parcel, in order.
Every bottle goes into bubble wrap on its own, and anything that could scuff it in transit — a tin, a wooden case, a stiff presentation box — travels wrapped separately alongside it rather than around it.
It is the boxes that break bottles more often than the drops do. A tube with a hard edge and eight hundred kilometres of vibration is a slow chisel.
We use custom double-walled cartons made for bottles rather than whatever came in that morning, and every void is filled so nothing can shift. A packed parcel should not rattle when you tip it.
Larger orders get compartments. Six bottles in one box arrive as six bottles that never touched each other.
Whichever of the four is the right one for your address gets the parcel, and you get the tracking number the moment it leaves us. It stays live all the way to the door. Most European destinations are a couple of working days; long-haul depends far more on customs than on flying time.
Somebody has to be there to sign for it. Alcohol cannot be left on a doorstep, and a failed delivery is a second attempt rather than a parcel in your porch.
Accept the parcel from the courier even when the outer box looks damaged — refusing it sends the whole thing back and makes a claim harder rather than easier. Then photograph it, box and bottle both, and contact us.
Do that within two days of the parcel arriving and we can put in a claim and find you a solution. Weeks later, with the packaging thrown out, there is very little anybody can prove.
Cover, duty and tax
Shipping is rarely the only line a parcel adds. There is what it costs to move, what it costs to insure, and what your own country charges for the privilege of receiving alcohol — three separate figures with three separate reasons.
Only the first two are ours. We would still rather you saw all three in one place, before you bid, than discovered the third from a courier standing at your door with a card machine.
Couriers do not accept liability for glass. Without cover, a bottle that arrives in pieces is simply a bottle in pieces, and that is true of every carrier rather than a quirk of ours.
Our cover is calculated on the hammer price plus the buyer's fee and pays out on loss and on breakage in transit. It is added at checkout by default and comes off in one click if you would rather carry the risk yourself.
Insurance covers what the journey did, not what was already there. A weeping seal, a torn label or a tired box that was photographed exactly as it is in the catalogue is not a transit loss, however disappointing it is to unwrap.
Age itself is not covered either, and on old bottles that matters. A cork that has spent forty years drying out can give way in transit without anybody mishandling anything, and leakage that comes from a perished cork or a failing seal falls outside the cover rather than inside it. It is the single most common thing that goes wrong with an old bottle, and no carrier and no policy treats it as damage.
That is the reason for the magnifier and for describing condition — fill level, seal, capsule — in the detail we do. What you see on the lot page is what is coming.
A tax on alcohol, charged per bottle at the rate of the destination and worked out from the volume and the strength. It is not related to what you paid, and it is not ours: we collect it and pass it on.
The calculator on our excise page will give you the exact figure for a bottle before you bid, which for some destinations is a larger number than the whisky.
For destinations outside the European Union, import duty and local taxes are the buyer's responsibility, payable on arrival. Complying with your own country's rules on importing alcohol is likewise yours — we can tell you what we know, but we cannot know it for you.
Customs can open a parcel, hold it, and occasionally send it back. If a shipment returns to us, we do not refund it — the sale stands and the shipping has been spent. What we do instead is sit down with you and find another way: a different delivery address, a country the bottle can legally reach, collection from Groningen, or relisting it in a coming auction on your behalf. Nobody is left holding a bottle that cannot go anywhere.
Shipping we invoice carries VAT like the rest of our fees, and every rate quoted on this page is exclusive of it. It is charged at the rate of the country we are delivering to rather than a flat Dutch one, so the amount added differs from one destination to the next. Outside the EU there is no Dutch VAT on the shipment at all.
Your invoice always shows it on its own line, with the rate it was worked out at, so what was added and to what is never a matter of interpretation.
You are welcome to arrange collection yourself, and some buyers with a freight account or a long-standing forwarder do exactly that. We still pack the bottles to the same standard and charge a flat handling fee for it.
What we cannot do in that case is cover the journey. Once a parcel leaves with somebody else's courier, whatever happens next is between you and them.
Questions about shipping
If your question is about a parcel that is already on its way, the tracking number in your account will usually answer it faster than we can. If it does not, tell us the same day rather than the following week.
Select your country in the calculator above and you will see the entire rate table for your zone — every slot count, not just the one you happen to be thinking about. That is the price we will charge you.
Add VAT at your own country's rate, add excise duty for your country, and add insurance if you keep it. Those three are the whole difference between the table and your invoice.
One caveat on the table itself: the rates are averages worked out over a great many shipments, and they assume a box filled to the maximum number of bottles we can pack safely. Beyond that the shipment is split into another box and charged as a second parcel, automatically.
The list in the calculator is decided by what the law allows rather than by what we would like, and it does change as rules do. If your country is absent, we cannot legally send whisky there.
You can still bid and have the lot delivered to an address in a country we do ship to — a friend, a relative, a forwarding service. Plenty of members buy that way, and getting it onward from there is between you and them.
That is exactly what the storage window is for. Bottles you win stay with us free for 10 weeks, which spans at least two more auctions, and you choose when the whole lot travels.
It is the single biggest saving available to a regular buyer. Six bottles in one box cost a great deal less than six boxes, and the waiting costs nothing.
A slot is the space a standard bottle takes up once it is packed — around two kilos all in. For most lots one bottle is one slot, and the rate table reads exactly as you would expect.
Oversized bottles and tall presentation boxes take up two or more, which is why the table counts slots rather than bottles. Where we know a lot is oversized, it is noted in the description.
Within Europe, usually a couple of working days once the parcel is collected. Further afield it depends almost entirely on customs rather than on the flight, and a week is not unusual.
Parcels leave after your invoice is settled and after the auction has been fully processed, so the useful clock starts at payment rather than at the closing evening.
Yes. Alcohol cannot be left on a doorstep or with a neighbour, so a shipment needs a signature from an adult at the address. If nobody is there, the carrier will try again.
If you are away for a fortnight, leave the bottles with us instead and send them when you are back. Storage is free for 10 weeks and a parcel touring a depot is nobody's idea of care.
Accept it from the courier even if the box looks bad — refusing it sends everything back to us and makes the claim harder. Then photograph the outer box and the bottle, keep all the packaging, and contact us within two days.
With the photographs and the packaging we can put a claim in and sort out a solution. Without them, weeks after the fact, there is very little to work with.
No. It is added at checkout because most people want it, and you can remove it in one click. It costs 3,5% of the hammer price plus buyer's fee, with a minimum of € 5,00.
Declining it means a bottle lost or broken in transit is your loss, because the carrier will not accept liability for glass. On an inexpensive bottle that is a reasonable bet. On a rare one it very rarely is.
Inside the European Union, no — excise duty is settled through us and appears on your invoice. Outside it, import duty and local taxes are yours to pay on arrival, and the carrier will collect them before handing the parcel over.
What those come to is set by your own customs authority and we have no influence over it. Look it up before you bid if the sum matters to you, because it can be substantial.
You can. Buyers who are nearby, or who are coming to a depot anyway, collect in person by arrangement, and there is no shipping charge on a lot that never travels.
There is one thing to know before you drive over: a bottle collected here carries Dutch excise duty, even if you are taking it straight back to Germany or considerably further. The moment it leaves our premises it has entered the Dutch economic area, and customs have no way of knowing whether it stays here or goes with you. The Dutch rate is what has to be declared and paid, and that is not something we can waive on request.
If the destination rate would have been lower, having it shipped rather than collected is usually the cheaper route. The calculator on our excise page will show you both figures before you decide.
If you would rather send your own courier, we will pack the bottles to the same standard for a flat € 4,00. From the moment they leave with somebody else's driver, though, the journey is not ours to answer for — and the same Dutch excise rule applies, because the bottle still left our building on Dutch soil.
No. A returned shipment does not undo the sale, and the shipping that was spent getting it there has been spent. That is the honest answer, and we would rather give it here than in an e-mail after the event.
What we do instead is work it out with you. There is almost always another way: a delivery address in a country the bottle can legally reach, collection from Groningen, or relisting it in a coming auction on your behalf so it finds a buyer it can actually get to. Tell us what suits you and we will arrange it.
Loss and breakage in transit — a parcel that never arrives, or one that arrives with glass in it. That is what the cover is for, and it is settled on the insured value: the hammer price plus our buyer's fee.
What it does not cover is age. A cork that gives up after forty years, a seeping seal, a label that was already tired in the catalogue photographs — those are the condition of the bottle rather than something the journey did to it, and no carrier insures them.
Put them back into an auction. Anything sitting in your storage can be relisted straight from your account without leaving the building, which saves you the shipping in both directions and us the handling — selling with us explains what happens from there.
It is worth doing sooner rather than later. Storage is free for 10 weeks and charged after that, so a bottle you have already decided against is quietly costing you money while it waits.
