"How Do Wine Clubs Work?"

The Good Wine Machine...
And An Answer to "How Do Wine Clubs Work?"

Buying wine at your local store or supermarket is a gamble. In today's
fast-paced world, however, you probably don't have the time to go around researching and finding great wine for a special occasion. Bottles of wine, more often than not, will end up going straight from the shopping cart to your table.

Wine clubs - the good ones, at any rate - have come to solve that problem for you... which is especially good if the quality of wine is central to both your personal life experience and the success of a dinner or celebration.

Trying to explain how do wine clubs work can be challenging, in the sense that different wine clubs do it in very different ways. You'll find though that they all have some common defining features. They basically do the work of selecting wines for you and, because they buy large quantities of their chosen wines, they receive discounts that benefit you as well.

Boutique Wineries & Winery Clubs

Besides the abundant online wine clubs run by large retailers, there are many wine clubs specializing in boutique wineries, such as the excellent BC Wine Club in Canada or The California Wine Club

In these cases, as well as in the case of any serious wine club, the clubs have an expert or team of experts who are dedicated to sampling wines periodically, in order to choose wines for their exclusive selections.

Winery-based wine clubs work in a slightly different way, offering you the best from their own vineyards in each selection and giving you access to special release bottles that are not available to the general public.

Some top-rated winery-based clubs are the Chateau Ste. Michele's Wine Club in Washington and Friends of Fall Creek in Texas.

State of the Wine

Once you have chosen a wine club and subscribed to one of their wine plans, you start receiving the wines of your choice, typically every month, although there are clubs offering bi-monthly and quarterly selections as well.

The best wine clubs tend to have their own cellars. This guarantees the state of their wines, and it also opens the possibility of (often available) storage space for members, where your personal selection can enjoy the benefit of optimum storing conditions.

While some wine clubs run their own delivery operation, most of them use a local postal service such as USPS. So when dealing with wine; packaging, handling, and delivery are of the utmost importance. (Lengthy delivery or careless packaging can in fact result in breakage or loss of quality, especially during the summer months.)

What to Expect

If you are asking yourself how do wine clubs work and what they can do for you, I'll say that there are many great wine clubs that work extraordinarily well indeed. They have knowledgeable experts select great wines for you, which they then pack in a secure way for a prompt delivery to your door, at a much better price than you would get from the local store.

In addition to this, most wine clubs offer extra benefits such as invitations to wine tastings and vineyard tours. The wines usually reach you accompanied by food pairing and tasting notes, and both quality and timeliness are guaranteed.

All in all, it is a very good deal. :-)