They May Take The Hassle Out Of Choosing Wine But Do Wine Clubs Offer Value For Money We Pore Over The Pros And Cons
Whether you’re a weeknight quaffer or a seasoned collector, there’s a lot to love about buying wine online: shopping in your pyjamas, having wine delivered to your door, and having an expert do all the hard work of narrowing down the selection for you.
Wine clubs and subscriptions can take this convenience to the next level. Set-and-forget models mean you don’t even need to remember to order the wine arrives on your doorstep on a regular basis. But how can you tell whether they’re right for you?
Laithwaites Wine Club Coupon Code
Our Rating 5/5
You can find Laithwaites coupons online and in the club newsletter so make sure you sign up. It’s another 5 from me.
Find Laithwaites wine coupon codes and promotional offers by searching online before ordering. Moreover, when you sign up for their newsletter, stay on top of their latest discounts to take advantage of Laithwaites wine voucher options directly.
World Class Wine Amazing Community
We joined the wine club at Waltz Vineyards for one main reason the wine. To get a world-class, award-winning wine in our own backyard is exciting. We have found so many more reasons to stay the fellowship of fellow club members at fun, informative and exclusive events the opportunity to support a local, family-owned business the convenience of picking up our wine at a number of locations and/or events and the personable and knowledgeable owners Jan and Kim Waltz and their staff. And still the wine the best reason to be a Waltz Vineyard wine club member.We joined the Waltz wine club in the first year it began, and it just keeps getting better every year! The variety of wine is always excellent. The wine package provides us with an opportunity to drink our favorite wines and try new ones, including wines that arent available to the public. We also really enjoy the members only events, including the concerts and special events, like the wine dinners. Weve even made new friends at the events who love the wines as much as we do. Since we are from out of town, visiting the winery is like a little vacation. Of course, the best part is every time we visit, we feel like were part of the family. Jan and Kims warmth and hospitality always makes us feel like we are right at home Cheers!
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Which Subscriptions Didn’t Make The Cut And Why
Our picks were chosen through a mix of personal experience, reviews from industry-leading wine and food sites, and customer reviews from casual enthusiasts via third-party sites like TrustPilot and HighYa. We also took into consideration factors such as customer service, ease of site navigation and breadth of selection.
Though media companies are credited with kicking off the wine club renaissance in 2008 , they use one of a few, massive wine merchants to fill their orders. As a result, these companies, along with older clubs like Laithwaite’s and Turner Classic Movies’, essentially pull from the same lot, often marking up prices in the process. The lack of value and unique offerings excluded these services from our list. Some of the older clubs like Vinesse and California Wine Club do deliver a high-quality selection, but they also have text-heavy sites that are exhausting to navigate as well as cancellation policies that involve tedious phone calls.
Winc and Firstleaf are great examples of quiz-based wine clubs that offer customizable breadth to consumers. However, Bright Cellars, which also uses a quiz to discern customers’ likes and dislikes, did not make our list. We found that this particular club ships lackluster wines, the palate quiz often spits out the same or nearly identical recommendations for very different people and its customer service could be better.
Firstleaf Wine School Review
Firstleaf even has a wine school. With nearly 30 topics, this online wine resource offers you a comprehensive guide to the worlds most popular grapes, breakdowns of famous wine regions, and the answers to some of your questions on wine.
For instance, where and how large is the Bordeaux region? What are Muscat wines known for, and is Moscato the same? The Firstleaf Wine School tells you all of this and much more.
So if you aspire to be a wine nerd, are naturally curious, or want to impress people with your wine knowledge, this is a resource to take advantage of.
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Best Wine Club For Intermediates
I tried this wine club and have to say the hit rate of solid wines was extremely high for my moderately experienced palate. If you’ve graduated from the Gallos and the Cupcakes and want to include more nuanced, complex and higher-priced premium wine in your life, First Leaf wine club might be good for you too. Its palate quiz is one of the most involved, asking for varietal preferences in addition to using several household name wines as taste benchmarks. This intelligent wine subscription service gets to know you by asking about certain tasting notes and qualities you might prefer in your perfect wine — such as minerality — in contrast to similar quizzes which assume many don’t know what that means. In short, this is probably the best wine club for a wine enthusiast who has the basics down and is ready to launch into expert wine tasting territory.
First Leaf offers six bottles of wine delivered per month for $80. You can schedule the delivery frequency however you please , and can swap out each of your selections through your account, but if you don’t like the replacement, you’ll have to email customer support. Otherwise, skipping a single order, putting your account on hold, reactivating it, and canceling your subscription altogether can all be done through your online wine club account.
Specialty Wine Clubs Worth Exploring
Not every wine club that we think is great belongs on this list. Usually these are specialty clubs that we think are excellent, but not suitable for everyone. Here are our top 3 wine clubs that dont make this list but are absolutely worth joining.
SomMailier French Wine Club
French wine clubs in the US are rare. Great French clubs offering good value are like unicorns, and SomMailier is one of them. If youre wondering about their name, its a play on the words sommelier and mail, but pronounced like sommelier.
An eclectic but well-curated selection from Frances many regions including, but not limited to: Alsace, Beaujolais, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Jura, Provence, Roussillon, and the Rhone Valley. Its a great way to sample better-quality French wine. Some clubs offer inexpensive French fare that doesnt accurately represent the quality and style of Frances great regions this isnt one of them.
Its not about Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Champagne its about the unique family chateaux and vineyards throughout all of France. Easy-to-read cards include tasting notes, relevant winery history, and a primer on the region the bottle hails from .
We enthusiastically recommend this wine delivery service as a gift to anyone who loves French wine or wants to learn more about it. The packaging is lovely and carefully assembled, making a great presentation. A personalized note is included in the first shipment.
Read our SomMailier Review or join this wine club.
Roscioli Italian Wine Club
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The Wine Recommendations Are Fantastic
These were my first beautiful bottles from Winc’s wine subscription.
There are a few gifts Ive been blessed with in lifebeing able to pick out a good bottle of wine from a lineup is not one of them. If its not a brand Ive tried, Im not great at figuring out whether Id like it. And Im sure the fact that I pick out bottles purely based on labels doesnt help.
Winc did an incredible job recommending wines that I actually liked. My first four bottles were delicious. Here were my first four wines and how I felt about each:
Overall, Winc sent me a number of wines I would have never reached for myselfreds, sauvignon blancs, and fruity drinks. And surprisingly, I loved each one.
Wine Is A Unique Product
Selling wine online is different than selling general merchandise, so you want to use software specific to selling wine. There is a lot to think about – everything from legal restrictions , alcohol taxes, compliance, shipping and wine club processing. Wine is an interesting product to sell, so working with someone thats done it before will save a winery a lot of hassle.
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Educating Buyers About Wine
Every shipment you get will include designed wine cards that contain a wine profile , tasting notes, dish pairing recommendations, and some basic information about the region the wine came from. Wine profile describing the wines body, acidity, sweetness, fruit, and tannin.
Once the first shipment of 6 bottles arrives and you rate the wines, the Firstleaf wine education work is not done. The company takes pride in offering a professionally certified wine concierge service, created to answer any questions you might have, help personalize future shipments even better and provide tips for a meal pairing.
Moreover, Firstleafs online wine school is available to guide you through the world of wine articles and videos about the most widespread grape types, best wine regions, a detailed guide to wine bottle shapes, and many more.
Summary And Final Thoughts On Naked Wines
If you love wine, then Naked Wines will be a perfect destination for you. With a social and friendly community of fellow wine lovers, youre constantly being introduced to popular, new and exciting wines that you may never have experienced elsewhere apart from Naked Wines.
Then, of course, there are the wine prices. For high-end wine, youre paying seriously reasonable prices, making Naked Wines extremely good value for your hard-earned money, especially when you sign up to become a Naked Wine Angel.
It does not matter if you just like to share a bottle of wine with your partner or friends during the weekend Naked Wines allow you to order as much as you like. With great features like Naked Wines Angels, a subscription model, a rewarding coupon system, a friendly support team and plenty of discounts on wines, Naked Wines has proven to be one of the best online shops in the world.
Be sure to visit the site today and sign up to enjoy reasonable prices, discounts on wines and lots of perks for Angel members.
About the author
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Promoting Your Wine Club
One of the best places to promote your wine club is in person when you have a captive audience and are sharing your personal experience. If you charge a tasting fee for the experience, consider waiving it by joining a club. Well dive deeper into more ways to promote your wine club later on in this series, but begin to think about promotional opportunities on-premise.
The Best Wine Club For French Wine
For Francophiles, this wine club seeks to replicate the sommelier in a fine French restaurant or wine bar but from the comfort of your home. For one, all the wines come from France, but the team selecting them also lives and works in French wine regions and thus are intimately acquainted with the nuance of the product. To further drill down on the sommelier experience, SomMailer includes thoughtful food pairings and in-depth descriptions with every bottle.
To sign up for SomMailer, you’ll choose either three bottles or six bottles to be delivered quarterly and then select all red wine, all white wine or a mix of both. Subscriptions to SomMailer can be canceled anytime, but if you want to just try one box or gift a box of three or six French wines to a friend, you can do that too.
The best part is if you find a wine you really love, SomMailer will sell you a case of either three, six, or 12 bottles a la cart. This is great because you may not be able to find every wine you try in your local package store.
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What Is Naked Wines
Founded by Rowan Gormley, Naked Wines is an online wine shop that has its headquarters in Norwich, UK. The wine shop was established on 1st December 2008 in the United Kingdom. In the year 2015, Majestic Wine, a British brick and mortar retailer, purchased the online shop. At the moment, it operates in the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Australia.
Essentially, the Naked Wines online shop connects small independent winemakers with wine lovers in the United Kingdom. All mediators that normally squeeze themselves in the middle, ranging from marketers to distributors and agents, are gone. This brings the wine price substantially down, a saving that is passed on to wine lovers.
On the other hand, the wine makers are paid the whole amount that the customers pay, minus the transportation costs and the ten per cent commission that usually goes to the Naked Wines Company. The success of the company is found in two main tools that it has successfully leveraged. These tools include Naked Wine Marketplace and the Naked Wine Angels.
The Naked Wine Club is backed by more than 200,000 subscribers in the United Kingdom and 100,000 in the United States. In this online shop, the subscribers are referred to as the Angels, who have managed to invest more than £3 million every month in small-scale vintners and wineries who cant otherwise produce wines due to a lack of enough marketing funds.
Is Firstleaf Wine Club Worth It
In this Firstleaf Wine Club review, we provide our impression on the Firstleaf Wine Club, and whether or not its worth the money.
Since youre getting the wine directly from Firstleaf, theyre passing savings on to you. The convenience of previewing the shipment, setting your delivery date, and making desired changes online is helpful. Including shipping, the cost of $15 per bottle is very reasonable.
For these reasons along with various positive reviews and other information contained in this Firstleaf review, we feel the Firstleaf Wine Club is worth trying out.
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Naked Wines Delivery Process
We found the delivery process to be well organized and relatively simple. Since you have to sign for the wine delivery, the company is very good about sending you email updates. We got an email with tracking info as soon as they began picking out our wines, then another email once the wine shipped. We also got email and text alerts with updates. When the box arrived it was packaged very securely and all the bottles were packed separately. There were also handles on the box to make carrying easier.
General Questions About The California Wine Club
How do most people hear about The California Wine Club?
Since 1990 we have been steadily growing our wine of the month club, mostly due to referrals by happy wine club members. Our secret is that nobody loses, everybody wins! Our wine of the month club members win by getting to experience great wine they can’t find in their local area. Our wineries win because they get some wonderful exposure to thousands of wine enthusiasts!
How did The California Wine Club get started?
California is home to thousands of small family wineries handcrafting extraordinary wine in quantities too limited to be found in local stores or shops. In 1990, wine club founders Bruce and Pam Boring discovered that these winemaking families were the most passionate in the wine world and that their wines were the hidden gems of wine country. The wine club has since distinguished itself by taking great care in selecting only the finest wineries as partners and by featuring only the best wine from each.
Why do we work with small wineries?
Smaller production wineries are usually more about “passion” and less about “profit”. They are hands-on, dedicated farmers who spend their days doing what they love — making great wine — that’s their single goal! Most of these wineries are too small to distribute on a large scale, so The California Wine Club brings these magnificent wines to you. You’ll never have to miss out on some incredible wines just because you don’t live near the winery!
Why join a wine club?
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Do Independent Wine Clubs Save You Money
They can, but one of the downside of wine clubs that support smaller producers or only stock wines exclusive to them is that it can be tricky to calculate whether you’re getting value for money.
“It can be hard to know what you’re getting unless you’re sent a bottle to taste in advance, it can be a bit of a gamble,” says Matt Dunne, group sommelier for hospitality group Solotel, which owns venues such as Aria Sydney.
Crafty pricing tactics can catch out even the most savvy consumer. Some retailers may inflate the recommended retail price of a wine to make it seem like you’re getting a cracking deal at the price they’re asking.
“The way a lot of these deals are promoted is actually a bit scandalous,” Hooke says.
You know the type: “RRP $35 our price $25” on a bottle that’s really only worth $15. And consumers can’t check the accuracy of the pricing because the wine is only available through that particular retailer. They could tell you it’s worth anything and you’d have no way of checking.
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Use wine apps to check if you’re paying too much
There are apps that can help you find out more about the wine: Is it overpriced? What do the reviews say? Has it won any wine awards?
Dunne recommends the Delectable, Vivino and Wine Searcher apps as good options for checking whether you’re paying too much for a particular wine.
