The Best Time To Buy A Wine Club Gift Subscription
Many gifts are time-sensitive. Meaning, you need to get them during a certain month or season in order for them to be relevant, useable, appreciated, or fresh. The beauty of wine is that a good cup of merlot can be enjoyed every day of the year. Wine clubs take samples from vineyards all over the world, across a spectrum of grapes, climates, and growing conditions. So, the best time to buy a wine club gift subscription is, of course, right now.
Matanzas Creek Winery: Wine Club
- Why we chose it: Sustainably-farmed vineyards, breathtakingly beautiful gardens and lavender fields.
- Who its for: This is one of the best wine clubs for conscious consumers. Its also great for lavender lovers and anyone looking for an idyllic and relaxing get-away.
Tucked in the middle of Bennett Valley, is the most gorgeous little vineyard you ever did see. Matanzas Creek Winery boasts grounds bursting with lavender fields, oak and olive trees, native grasses, and of course grapes.It is for this stunning scenery that we have put the Matanzas Creek Winery on our list of the best Sonoma California wine clubs. This is the perfect place to have a picnic and enjoy a glass of refreshing Sauvignon Blanc or Merlot.When you sign up for the Matanzas wine club youll get to see more of this beautiful winery. This includes tickets to special events, private estate tastings, and up to 25% off all wine and merchandise.
How Does The California Wine Club Work
The California Wine Club is big on regularly introducing new wineries to its members and, to this end, showcases a different producer each month through its five different plans. Each subscriber gets a personal wine expert to guide them to the best wines for their tastes plus each shipment is accompanied by educational notes on the wines. Members who are visiting California can take advantage of the clubâs savvy on the region through an excursion-planning service called âWine Country Travel Tripsâ. If you prefer a more casual visit to the Golden State, you benefit from VIP passes to tasting events at partner wineries. The California Wine Club also offers a range of gift options for loved ones who are fellow fans of the grape. All in all, it has all of the features you could want from a wine club: unique, high-quality wines, great customer service, and plenty of perks.
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How To Choose A Wine Club For Yourself
If youre still unsure about which wine club to order from, or you want additional options beyond our picks, heres a cheat sheet on what wed recommend, based on different scenarios:
If you dont want to spend a lot and prefer to schedule your own deliveries:
- Naked Wines lets you choose your own wines and allows you to decide when they get shipped.
If youre willing to pay a bit more for interesting wines picked by real sommeliers:
- Wine Access will choose for you and ship the wines with an ice pack in warmer months. And it will provide lots of info about the wines. Ships four to six times per year.
- SommSelect will choose for you and include info about the wines. You can also build your own case of wines. Monthly shipments.
If youre willing to spend a lot on the wines you drink, you prefer getting a completely customizable selection chosen by a sommelier, and youre also willing to pay more for shipping:
- See our guide to our favorite boxed and canned wines for more options.
If you want a wine club that supports a specific cause:
- There are many clubs that focus on certain causes, such as Natural Action Wine Club, which supports education, internships, and career opportunities for members of the BIPOC community interested in the wine industry. Other clubs, like Vinovores Wine Club, focus on wines from women winemakers. Dont forget to look locally, too, since there may be a wine shop in your area that gives back to your community in some way.
Independently Rated #1 Seven Years In A Row
It’s one thing to be the biggest. But what we really pride ourselves in is being the best. So even though we know it, it’s always flattering to hear it from someone else. Amazing Clubs is proud to be rated #1 among all providers of gift of the month clubs by TopTenReviews!
“Well worthy of the TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award…Amazing Clubs features high-quality products that are amazing. You won’t have to worry about getting your money’s worth, AmazingClubs’ monthly gifts are classy, premium, and tasty.”
About TopTenReviews: Founded in 2003, TopTenREVIEWS is the leading online review website with over 6million pages of content in over 200 product categories. TopTenReviews provides in depth, expertreviews and side-by-side product comparisons enabling consumers to research thousands of differentproducts and services.
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Can I Give The California Wine Club Membership As A Gift
Our Rating 5/5
You can choose any of California Wine Club’s plans as a gift earning it a score of 5.
Each of the clubâs membership plans is available as a gift. When you purchase a gift subscription, you select the number of deliveries youâd like to send from one to 12. Each gift shipment arrives with a pamphlet detailing the tasting notes and food pairing tips. You can also email or print out a special card template announcing your gift.
Grand Tour Monthly Subscription
A Grand Tour subscription is by no means cheap, but compared to the other wine clubs in this article, Grand Tour is the most reasonably priced. Each month you get four bottles of wine, you will get tasting notes, and you get the story behind each wine.
Typically, you get two whites and two reds, but they occasionally throw in sparkling wine or rose wine. It sounds like a novice thing to say, but even if this is not the best premium wine club, it may appeal to the broadest audience because the wine variety means there will be at least one wine you love.
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CURATED and exclusive wines just for members
CUSTOMIZATION options to suit your preferences
EXPERIENCES exclusive to our members
FLEXIBLE delivery dates for your convenience
What About Natural Wine Clubs
If youre unfamiliar with natural wines, the term may sound a little funny. Natural, after all, would imply that other wines are somehow unnatural, but thats not the case. Theres not an official definition of natural wine . But at its most basic level, natural wine is wine made from native yeasts , rather than from cultured yeasts . Its sort of like bread thats made from sourdough starter, versus bread thats made from a packet of store-bought yeast. Also, the grapes arent sprayed with pesticides or herbicides, and the wines are often unfiltered and contain fewer additives.
We plan to test clubs featuring natural wines in an upcoming update of this guide. In the meantime, we did hours of research and spoke with a few experts, and we found that clubs like Primal Wine Club, Plonk Wine Club, MYSA Natural Wine, Helens Wine Club, and Dry Farm Wines all offer a good value and selection of natural wines. Because the natural wine pool is usually smaller, theres often overlap with the bottles these clubs sell. Our best advice is to find a club that meets your specific needs, whether thats based on the shipping price, number of bottles, or the frequency of shipments. If you need help getting started, see our section on how to choose a wine club, which includes suggestions for clubs that feature natural wines.
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Rated Wine Club 7 Years In A Row
- Each month we’ll deliver 2 full-sized bottles of hard-to-find, premium wines from award-winning and boutique wineries around the world.
- We feature two different wineries every month, one bottle from each winery, and you can choose between red wine, white wine, or a bottle of each.
- Every wine we deliver has been highly-rated by our independent advisory board of wine professionals and each monthly delivery is covered by our unbeatable “They’ll Love It!” Guarantee!
What Is The California Wine Club
The California Wine Club was started in 1990 by Bruce and Pam Boring who had discovered a rich range of boutique wineries in California and wanted to share the wines from these hidden gems with a wider network. To this day, the club only partners with the finest wineries and only selects the best wines for its range after doing a round of personal visits and tastings. It offers a choice selection of memberships that reflect award-winning artisanal winemaking in the US and abroad.
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What Are Wine Club Gift Subscriptions
A wine club is a service that offers consumers competitive pricing on top-quality wines from around the world. You can get just about any wine, and it is delivered straight to your door. Pricing is much more reasonable–sometimes as much as 60% off the retail price.
You can give someone a wine club gift subscription. Why would you? When you buy someone a single bottle of wine, it’s a nice gesture. When you buy them a subscription, they get new bottles every month. It’s the gift that keeps on giving and its guaranteed to score some big points with the recipient.
Get Out And Enjoy These California Wine Clubs
As you can see, the best wine clubs in California deliver more than just amazing wine selections. Want beautiful views while sipping chardonnay? Desire a budget friendly price point without sacrificing taste? Or do you want an award-winning culinary experience to go with that glass of sauv? There is sure to be a place on our list of the best Sonoma California wine clubs that calls out to you. So check out the list above and let us know if we helped you find a new favorite!
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Cellar Angels: Wine Club
- Why we chose it: A convenient service for discovering the hidden gems of Sonoma County.
- Who its for: Anyone planning a trip to Sonoma or hoping to dip their toes into the world of Sonoma wines.
Not everyone is blessed enough to live in Sonoma County, but that doesnt mean they have to miss out on the best wine clubs! Luckily, with the Cellar Angels Wine Club, you can get the best of Sonoma County delivered straight to your door.The Cellar Angels team finds the finest limited production bottles of wine from Sonoma and Napa, sending them to club members in quarterly shipments. Membership also includes behind-the-scenes video interviews with winemakers, and there is absolutely no contract commitment.Best yet, if youre taking a trip to Sonoma, Cellar Angels will help you plan everything! They offer a luxury car service for their California wine club members and will zip you from tasting to tasting in style. Theyll even suggest wineries to visit and set up VIP private wine tastings.
Our Picks: The 10 Best Wine Clubs In Sonoma Right Now
We named these the best wine clubs for a variety of reasons, not just the esteem of the wines themselves. A wine club is about so much more than just the wine. Its about the culture, the environment, and the community that the club creates. Even if we wanted to, we couldnt possibly list all the fantastic vineyards in the area. You should come to Northern California and enjoy wine tasting in Sonoma County so you can explore them for yourself.So, ready to get started? If you live in Sonoma, or are heading there for vacation soon, and are wondering Where are the best wine clubs near me? This is the list for you.The amazing range of microclimates and soil composition is just one thing that sets Sonoma County apart from any other wine region. And that means these California wine clubs are one of a kind too. So without further ado, here are some of the best wine clubs to join in 2021.
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Send A Gift They’ll Love
With 42 amazing clubs, and options to fit any budget, we’ve got the gifts theyll love month after month. From our world-famous wine and beer clubs, to sweet sensations like chocolate, cheesecake, and pie, to our newest additions like jerky, pickles and honey, only Amazing Clubs has been independently rated #1 seven years in a row!
Where To Find The Wines
If you need help procuring your New Years Eve wines I highly recommend you find a nearby specialty wine retailer. This is where youll find folks with a wide selection of special wines and who know how to listen to the customers.
Once your track down the right wine shop, feel free to tell the clerk how many people youll be having over, whether its a sit down dinner or more casual affair and be clear about how much you want to spend overall or on each bottle. The clerk will be able to estimate how much wine you need and guide you in your selections. If you know what you want and feel like you dont need any help with your wine selections, consider looking online. There are a number of outstanding online stores, as well as top wine club subscription services that allow you to discover new wines you might not have thought about .
Importantly, dont run out of wine on New Years Eve. Buy a little bit more than you need. No one wants to have to make a wine run in the middle of the celebrations.
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The Most Exclusive Club: The List
Eric Kent wines are well-suited to the “list” model: labeled with unique artwork commissioned for each wine, each vintage, the lushly fruited Syrah, Pinot Noir, and other varietals are sourced from small Sonoma County vineyards and cannot be sampled at a traditional tasting room.
But winemaker Kent Humphrey says they wanted to avoid some of the disadvantages of other models: “One of them is that you could be on someone’s list for 10 years and if you weren’t at home when the release announcement arrives,” says Humphrey, “you might miss out.” It happened to them they got shut out of some wines after buying religiously for seven years. “We didn’t feel that was right and wanted to offer an alternative.”
The other issue, says Humphrey, is that “so many will tell you what you get, rather than you telling them what you want.” So the Eric Kent wine list is a sort of hybrid: while wines are sold to members of the list only, there is no wait period, list members choose all of the wines that they receive, twice a year with a 10 percent discount, and they may reorder wines thereafter at any time. Members need not buy anything in order to stay on the list, and it works because they know which wines will be available, even when the wine is still in the barrel.
Sommailier French Wine Club
SomMailier is built around a family who has been making French wine for 5 generations and has access to boutique French wines that are not yet accessible in the US. If you have already traveled to France, you know exactly what we are talking about. Those are the wines people rave about when they visit France but cant find when they are back in the US. Most of the wines come from very small wineries with families making wines for several generations .
With SomMailier, youll receive more than just French wines. Youll get to learn about the different wine regions, winemakers, and the history of each wine as well as food pairing ideas and great tasting notes. Its a full experience of French wines without spending a fortune!
Each bottle comes with a special back label with even more information on each wine such as the grape varieties, the right serving temperature, the holding time, and more pairing ideas.
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The Ojai Vineyard Featured In The Wine Club Signature Series
This family winery was founded in 1983 by winemaker Adam Tolmach. Since then, his quest has been to perfectly combine the finesse of European-style winemaking and the grape types from the coast of southern California.
Two great wines coming from these vineyards:
- 2016 Duvarita Vineyard, Santa Barbara County Syrah that stricken 93 Points score from Vinousd and 92+ Points from Jeb Dunnuck
- 2018 John Sebastiano Vineyard, San Soufre Ajoute Grenache that scored 92-93 Points from Vinous.
Club Name: The Rare Luxuries Club
The wine experts at Decanter will curate six bottles of collectible wine for you each quarter. This newly-launched club will give you access to wines that are in demand at top restaurants and by world-renown collectors.
If you want wines that will turn heads at your next dinner party, this is the club for you.
Europe’s best-selling wine magazine and host to the worlds largest wine competition, Decanter features a tasting panel made up of some highly discerning palates. The expert tasters are all Masters in Wine, Sommeliers, or esteemed regional experts.
Cost Per Month: The Rare Luxuries Club from every four months.
Shipping: The price of shipping is included in the club price.
Return Policy: They will replace any bottle that doesn’t taste right with no questions asked.
To Join the Rare Luxuries Club from Decanter & Wine Access
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