Bringing Wine or Alcohol Aboard

Quick answer: Each cabin can carry two sealed 750 mL bottles of wine, sparkling wine or Champagne aboard on embarkation day, in hand luggage. Beer and liquor are not allowed. If you open your wine in a restaurant or bar, Virgin charges corkage ($25 per bottle as of November 2026). Alcohol bought in port or in the ship's shops is held until the end of the voyage.

The embarkation-day allowance

Virgin's general rule is that you do not bring alcohol aboard. The one exception is on embarkation day:

• How much: two 750 mL bottles per cabin. Virgin's ticket contract says this holds regardless of how many Sailors are in the cabin, so a cabin of three still gets two.
• What: wine, sparkling wine or Champagne. Virgin's pre-voyage FAQ says beer and liquor are not allowed.
• How: sealed and unopened, in your carry-on bag, not your checked luggage.
• Who: the ticket contract sets the age for carrying it on at 21.

The allowance is for embarkation day only. Bottles you pick up later in the trip follow the port rule below.

Do not pack it in checked bags

Virgin's own pages are not consistent on what happens to alcohol in a checked bag. The pre-voyage FAQ says it is collected and returned once the voyage is over; the ticket contract says alcohol outside the allowance is confiscated and discarded with no compensation. Either way you do not get to drink it onboard, so keep your two bottles in the bag you carry yourself.

Corkage at dinner

You can drink your wine in your cabin at no charge. If you would rather open it with dinner, Virgin's drinks FAQ says you are welcome to bring it to its eateries, and its ticket contract sets the corkage fee: as of November 2026, $25 per 750 mL bottle when you drink your own wine or Champagne in a restaurant or bar. Virgin says corkage can be paid with Bar Tab, which is a good use for credit that might otherwise be left over.

A practical tip: if you have one special bottle, plan which dinner it goes with when you make your dining reservations, so it is not still in the cabin on the last night.

Bottles bought in port or onboard

Virgin lets you bring specialty liquor bought at a port of call back to the ship, but not to your cabin. Hand it to security when you come back aboard and Virgin holds it for you. The ticket contract says the same for bottles bought in the ship's own shops. The FAQ says it comes back on the final night; the contract says at the end of the cruise. Either way, it is for taking home, not for drinking onboard.

Bar Tab cannot pay for packaged bottles to take home, so those go on your card.

A quick checklist for packing day

• Two bottles of wine, sparkling wine or Champagne per cabin, sealed, in a carry-on.
• No beer, no spirits, nothing alcoholic in the checked suitcase.
• Anything you buy in port goes to security on the way back aboard, not to your cabin.
• Budget corkage for any bottle you plan to open at dinner rather than in the cabin.

Sailors aged 18 to 20

Virgin is adults only, so everyone aboard is at least 18. Its ticket contract says Sailors aged 18 to 20 can buy and drink alcohol only while the ship is outside US territorial waters, and it sets 21 as the age for carrying wine aboard. If your group includes younger Sailors, have someone 21 or older carry the cabin's bottles.

If you are sailing with a group

Because the allowance is per cabin, a group of friends spread across several cabins can bring more wine between them than two people sharing one. That makes a shared dinner easy to plan: a few cabins each bring a bottle or two, the table pays corkage on what gets opened, and nobody has to buy every bottle from the list. Decide who brings what while the group is talking in the Nautir app before boarding, so you do not end up with eight bottles of the same rose.

Solo sailors get the same two bottles as any cabin. For everything else on embarkation day, see our embarkation day plan, and Virgin's prohibited items list covers what else stays at home.