Best Wine Clubs and Subscriptions to Gift in 2024

2 weeks ago 10

Best wine club and subscriptions to gift in 2024

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, Firstleaf Wine Club might be good for you too. Its palate quiz is one of the most involved, asking for varietal (Pinot Noir vs. Shiraz, for instance) 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.

Firstleaf's Classic Plan offers six tailored bottles of wine delivered per month for $90. The Preferred Plan offers a select (which means higher valued) six-bottle offering for $105 per month. Meanwhile, the Premier option gives you six bottles of top-tier wine for $120 per month, or go for the very best with the Fine Wine Plan that gives you six bottles from the Fine Wine Collection for $150 per month. You can schedule the delivery frequency however you please (according to the company, most customers pick an "every other month" schedule), 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.

Firstleaf offers a promotional discount on your first shipment, with pricing starting at $45 for your first shipment on a classic plan.

Simple to use and straightforward, if you're looking for the convenience and discount associated with wine delivery but not the commitment of a full subscription service, you might try Wine Insiders. The wine-delivery service offers wine lovers a careful selection of wines including reds, whites, sparkling wine and rosés all under $20 with zero subscription or monthly commitment and free shipping on six bottles or more. If you join their club you get 12 wines in a combination of reds, whites or a mix of both every 12 weeks for just $89. Right now, with the first club shipment, you get an extra three bottles for free, and if you do a second it comes with a free professional chrome corkscrew.

Cellars Wine Club ($34 and up per month) actually offers eight different wine clubs that you can switch between, based on your preferences. An expert team of wine sommeliers tastes and chooses the curated wines for the clubs every month. Ultimately, these sommelier experts draw from the same pool of wines, but the individual sub-clubs cater to specific tastes and categories.

Most of these sub-clubs ship a wine box with two wine bottles or more per month. Clubs are curated by themes like 90-plus point wines, sparkling wines and even a sweet wine club. While other services, especially palate-based ones, box you into experiencing certain kinds of wine, Cellars allows the wine drinker to be adventurous from one wine shipment to the next without compromising quality.

Switching between clubs can be done online through your account, but if you want to cancel your subscription, you have to reach out to customer service.

The popularity of biodynamic wines aligns with a growing desire to consume more natural foods and this organic wine club has its finger on the pulse of that shift in preferences. Organic grapes are a great place to start, but biodynamic farming and processing doesn't deteriorate the soil or add traditional winemaking additives like artificial sugars to natural wine.

Plonk Wine Club pulls biodynamic wines from all corners of the globe. As with everything else that's organic, this is a pricey box ($110 per month) that only contains four bottles. You can also order six or a dozen at a discount, but instead of getting an additional eight unique wines, you'll be stocking up on three bottles of each of that month's picks. The club is available in three options; white, red or mixed.

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 is 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 ($110 per shipment), six bottles ($209) or 12 bottles ($399) 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 three, six or 12 bottles a la carte. This is great because you may not be able to find every wine you try in your local package store.

Maybe wine isn't your drink of choice, but it's always nice to have a few great bottles of wine around. Ninety Plus Cellars ships rebranded wines from reputable wineries every three months. Meaning, they purchase a small percentage of bottles from vineyards with histories of highly rated wines and repackage them.

Starting at $95 per quarter, you'll get the six best wines of the season, six reds or a mix of six reds, whites and the occasional rosé and sparkling wine. It recently added a three-bottle option for $50 per shipment, that features a mix of red, white and the occasional sparkling or rosé, in case you want to stock up for a party or the holiday season. Some of the older, legacy wine club companies still do four shipments a year, but we think Ninety Plus offers a better value and has a more user-friendly website.

Roscioli Italian Wine Club

For those partial to old-world wine, Roscioli curates a selection of Italian bottles for decidedly discerning palates. The Roscioli family has been a fixture in Italy's food, wine and hospitality scene for two centuries. More recently, they've bottled up all that knowledge into a high-end wine club for serious imbibers and collectors alike.

Members of this wine club will receive two 12-bottle shipments per year (24 total) of Italian and old-world wines with an emphasis on biodiversity and biodynamics. Roscioli offers three subscription tiers starting at $860 per year for its Essential Italian Wine Club, $1,160 a year for the Premium Wine Club or $2,160 for the Collector Italian Wine Club.

Roscioli Wine Club ships nationwide in the US, and each shipment includes pairing suggestions and scannable QR codes that trigger video introductions to the winemaker. Membership also includes access to Roscioli's online community platform of wine courses and a portal where members can ask anything (well, anything wine-related) of an Italian winemaker or sommelier.

The best part? Club members can cash in on a complimentary wine tasting at Roscioli when visiting Rome.

Vinebox is a great way to try high-end wines from around the globe in its many tasting boxes available for purchase.

The cool and very giftable twist-top vials hit the middle ground between a tasting pour and a standard glass pour. This way, you can try these wines and maybe even have enough to pair with a meal or just unwind at the end of the day.

Their Box of the Month starts at $79 ($63 if you subscribe) and includes six 100ml vials of wine. You can also choose a single purchase of one of its boxes and go from there.

Other wine clubs we tested

Although media companies are credited with kicking off the wine club renaissance in 2008 (think The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times), they use one of a few, massive wine merchants to fill their orders. As a result, these companies, along with older clubs like Laithwaites 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.

Certified sommelier and CNET contributor Pamela Vachon raved about new comer The Waves in her review. The company focuses on natural and organic wines to differentiate itself.

Winc and Firstleaf are great examples of quiz-based wine clubs that offer customizable breadth to consumers. 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.

We absolutely loved the premium, boutique wine offerings of Pour This from renowned sommelier Ashley Ragovin, but her subscription service has been terminated. We looked into SommSelect monthly wine club as an alternative, but its selection doesn't quite offer the rare finds that Ragovin could produce.

How we evaluated wine clubs and subscriptions

Our picks were chosen through a mix of personal experience, in-depth reviews from industry leaders and customer reviews from third-party review platforms such as TrustPilot and HighYa. We also took into consideration factors such as customer service, ease of site navigation and breadth of wines to choose from to help you find the best wine subscription services. We did not personally test every service on this list, but we update as we try them.

Best wine subscriptions FAQs

What are the advantages of a wine club?

The best wine clubs to give as gifts offer access to limited-batch and private-label wines, as well as boutique and international wines and new releases. Many will personalize selections based on your specific flavor preferences, so you can avoid one of the primary pitfalls of novice wine buying: the thrill of choosing an attractive label followed by the disappointment of a lackluster glass. With sophisticated curators and review data to lean on, these bottle clubs have the concept of good wine down to a science.

Is wine cheaper when you buy it online?

It depends. In my neighborhood in New York, wine is exceptionally expensive to buy in package stores, and so I find I can find the best wine for the best prices when I purchase it online. Some of the most popular services, including Firstleaf, have excellent plans that will deliver great bottles for as little as $13 each. I can almost never find decent wine that cheap in my local shops, and so buying wine online is cheaper.

Are wine clubs hard to cancel?

Generally speaking, no. We haven't yet subscribed to every wine club, but the bulk of the ones we have tried make it fairly easy to cancel your subscription at no cost. Just be careful to read the details and fine print before you sign up. Some services will have options to commit to three or six months in advance, and in those cases, it may be harder to cancel until your commitment is through.

How do I pick the best wine club for me?

You may want to start by asking yourself a few questions that go beyond red or white, flat or sparkling. Do you want a wine service that is highly curated to your specific tastes and favorite wine types? Do you have a roster of usual wines or would you rather try (mostly) new wine? Perhaps you'd like a master sommelier sharing their tasting notes and opinions of certain bottles? Are you looking for premium fine wine or a bottle of some other artisanal specialties? Then there are vegan wines, naked wines, organic and biodynamic wines to consider, each with a niche wine club or two specializing in them. Most importantly, you must decide what a high-quality bottle of wine should cost. From there, you can use our list to find the best wine club or subscription service for you.

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