Freight forwarding Reims – champagne and goods to Czechia

Shipping champagne safely

Only sparkling wine from the delimited Champagne area may be sold as champagne, and Reims, together with nearby Épernay, is the trade's commercial heart. Beneath the city run miles of chalk cellars where the wine matures; since 2015 the Champagne hillsides, houses and cellars have been a UNESCO World Heritage site. For a forwarder this means one thing: most of what leaves Reims for Central Europe is bottles under pressure, heavy and sensitive to temperature.

• Frost can damage the wine and even burst bottles, while summer heat in a curtainsider speeds up ageing. In winter and summer we recommend an insulated or reefer trailer at a set temperature; in spring and autumn a standard trailer is usually fine.
• Cartons should be on stretch-wrapped pallets, not floor-loaded.
• Bottled wine is heavy, so a full truck usually reaches its weight limit before the floor is full.
• Insure high-value vintages according to their value before collection.

Demand is seasonal: importers and retailers fill their stock in autumn ahead of Christmas and New Year, so book in September or October if you need goods in the Czech Republic in November. A few pallets for a wine shop can travel by pallet groupage outside frost periods; distributor volumes are best sent as a full load.

Excise paperwork

Sparkling wine is subject to excise duty in the Czech Republic, so a CMR note and an invoice are not enough. Movements from France must travel with an electronic excise document in the EU's EMCS system: either under duty suspension to a tax warehouse or registered consignee, or as duty-paid goods that are then taxed in the Czech Republic. The consignor issues the document, the consignee needs the matching registration with Czech customs, the driver carries the reference number and the consignee confirms receipt. No customs duty applies within the EU. Setting up the excise arrangement is between supplier and buyer; we just need to know which document travels with the load.

Beyond wine: grain, beet and biorefining

The chalk plain around Reims is among France's most productive farmland, growing wheat, malting barley and sugar beet, and the region is one of the country's main producers of dehydrated alfalfa. A large biorefinery north-east of the city turns beet and grain into sugar, starch, ethanol and ingredients for chemicals and cosmetics. Czech importers source malt and malting barley, flour, sugar and starch products, alfalfa and feed, bioethanol (some of it moved under ADR rules) and confectionery, including the traditional pink Reims biscuits.

Route along the A4

Reims sits where the A4 Paris–Strasbourg motorway crosses the A26 Calais–Troyes. Trucks to the Czech Republic follow the A4 past Verdun and Metz, enter Germany at Saarbrücken and continue on the A6 via Mannheim, Heilbronn and Nuremberg to Waidhaus/Rozvadov. That is roughly 900 km to Prague and about 1,100 km to Brno, so a full truck typically arrives in 2 working days and groupage in 3–5. Because Reims lies on the busy Paris–Central Europe corridor, truck availability is good. France bans trucks over 7.5 t from Saturday 22:00 to Sunday 22:00 and on holidays; Germany on Sundays, holidays and summer Saturdays. Tolls are included in our freight calculator.

Return loads and loading tips

From the Czech Republic we bring container glass, cartons and packaging, food-processing machinery and parts, agricultural equipment and building materials to the Reims area. Small growers in the villages often have narrow streets and no dock, so we send a smaller truck or one with a tail lift; large houses and warehouses work with booked time slots. During harvest, usually in September, wine villages are busy and collections can be delayed.