How much wine you can bring home from the Canaries

Four litres of still wine per person and 430 € of value for everything you bring back. Those two figures decide whether the winery's six-bottle case makes it home intact or leaves a bottle behind on the island.

Buying the wine is the easy part of the trip. Getting it home involves a formality many travellers do not see coming. The Canaries are Spain, inside the European Union and inside its customs territory, but they sit outside the VAT territory. On the islands the tax is the IGIC, and that tax difference is what opens a traveller's allowance for anyone flying back to the Spanish mainland, with its value ceiling and its litres of alcohol.

The question comes up at the shop counter, bottles in front of you and the return boarding pass on your phone: how many can I take? The answer is set by the passenger allowance of the Agencia Tributaria, the Spanish tax agency, and it has two parts, the value of what you carry and the alcohol you bring through.

What comes in without paying

Two tables settle the question, and both count per person. The value ceiling is 430 € per traveller by plane or by ferry, and children under 15 get 150 €. That value covers every purchase of the trip, not only the bottles.

Alcohol, on the other hand, is counted by product:

Figures as of October 2026.

The first two categories combine with each other as long as you stay within that category's total, and still wine and beer keep their own tally. All of this covers goods for personal use, not for resale. The allowance is per head, not per family: a couple with two children adds up four allowances, even if the children do not drink. For alcohol the room narrows, because travellers under 17 get no alcohol or tobacco allowance at all.

The six-bottle case

For still wine, the everyday bottle, the arithmetic is simple. Four litres are five 75 cl bottles and a third of the sixth: the case of six falls one bottle short. Between two travellers the whole case fits, with litres to spare. That margin stretches further if sparkling joins the case, because sparkling does not touch the still-wine litres and plays in the two-litre category.

That third of a bottle that will not fit in your suitcase has an easy way out: the winery terrace, before the flight.

If you go over the count

The allowance is not a wall: it is the point up to which you pay nothing. Above it, the goods are declared at Customs with the verbal declaration form, and there are two ways out, clearing them by paying what is due or leaving them in storage. The actual paperwork, offices and forms, is handled by the Customs office at the airport of departure.

If your flight does not end in Spain

Everything above covers the return from the Canaries to the Spanish mainland or the Balearics. With another destination, other figures apply:

Within the European Union, wine for your own use generally travels with no extra payment. The EU figures, 90 litres of wine and at most 60 of sparkling, are the yardstick for judging what counts as personal use, not permission to resell. Towards a country outside the Union there is no amount that works for everyone: the customs of your destination decide.

The arithmetic works out better at the winery, bottles in front of you, than at the customs check with your suitcase open. If your return flight does not end in Spain, the missing sum is the one for your country of arrival, and you check that one before paying for the bottles.

* We recommend checking the exact conditions of each offer with the provider.