Originally Posted by
ncwillett
Are you sure you used an actual wine shipping box? Or was it just a box with cardboard dividers like you find wine in at the grocery store or Costco? Because an actual wine shipping box shouldn't require (or have room for) padding the corners with t-shirts. It will have molded styrofoam or molded heavy cardboard inserts that fit the interior of the box exactly, and have pre-formed spaces within for each bottle.
It had extra-thick cardboard inserts to divide it into 12 compartments and was double thick compared to the box you'd find wine in at a supermarket or liquor store. I got it from a friend who had used it to UPS wine to her parents and they'd used it to UPS home-canned goods (pickles, iirc) back to her, and my understanding is that was its official intent, which to me makes it a wine shipping box. It did not, however, have spaces that were in any way shaped for the bottles, other than having the right square dimensions. I just filled the four corner slots with something other than bottles because I was paranoid about them as impact zones. I'm sure there are higher-end boxes used for shipping wine, but this did the trick in a way that standard corrugated boxes that are only meant to be moved when stacked on a pallet never would have.