Dessert Wine Disaster

So I had volunteered to buy the dessert wines for our next wine club meeting even though I was vaguely aware that the dessert wines cost 9 million dollars for a piddling amount of wine. True story. Kate said she already had a Sauterne so all I needed to get was an ice wine, a Vin Santo and a Hungarian Tokaji. Good thing too cause this bottle of ice wine was $24.99 for 200 mls.,

unusual because it is a cabernet franc and red grapes

this santo was on sale for the $29.99

and this tokaji had to be hunted down by our wonderful wine consultant Lidia, and  imported into our town's LCBO, (pronounced "lick bow" according to E), and set me back a whopping $45.99.

this one comes in its own little box but still

aint they pretty

Not for the faint of heart or wallet.

So a few weekends a go while visiting Meg and Phil in Buffalo, we made a trip  to the premium wine store there. It was high on our agenda of must dos. And for good reason. It is a warehouse - a veritable warehouse full of delicious wine

hallelujah!

- imagine choir of angels. I was like a kid in a candy store and then I spied them- boxed Hungarian Tokaja for $30.00- OMG! what a deal! what a discount! what a glorious day! -yes choir of angels again!  At .5 litres I could buy 3 and import them back to Canada- maybe give them as Christmas gifts or  drink one on our 35th anniversary or something big. Just to make sure, I had Phil double check the import regs for booze on his cell so we knew we wouldn't run a foul of the law. Which is very bad to do don'tcha know. Mr. Lovely was excited about a bottle of Amaroni that he bought at a substantial discount too.   I also bought some Hendricks gin which I planned to leave with the kids for them to bring over at a later date and one for Phil so he could drink it for his BDAY. What could be wrong? I love this place.

So at the border crossing, there was a bit of wait and it was getting a bit trying. But not as much as having to answer all the questions by the customs official - like exactly how much wine did we have ( which we painstaking explained -  I had three .5 litre bottles , Mr. Lovely also had 1.5 litres, so we were within our personal limit) and when we have left the country etc. But it was about to get a lot more trying, cause guess what? We had not been out of the country long enough- we had to be out 48 hours and we were short of that. That meant we had to stop at the cashier hut and ante up for duty and taxes a grand total of $85.00. We didn't know that amount before we went in or we might have tried another strategy. &^%$#&* Do you mind! That wiped out our discount entirely and cost us more than it would have in Canada. What a Bummer with a capital B. I was  trying hard to b lovely but really I was b sad.
When I told Meg this saga she said "Mom this story broke my heart. You should have come back and left them at our house." Shoulda for sure.  Live and learn- check all the regs! Yeesh.