Where to Buy: Wine Insiders Club
In our current reality of stay at home orders, quarantine, social distancing, etc., I’ve become even more appreciative than before of online wine retailers who deliver to your door. The two primary categories for online wine sales are online wine shops and wine clubs. With shops you can choose specifically which wines you want to buy, while with wine clubs you often get whatever they choose to send you.
There are pros and cons to each. With an online wine shop, one obvious pro is picking the specific wines you want. But what if you’re not sure what you want? That’s where wine clubs have the advantage as they often pick the wines for you and give you an opportunity to try a number of different wines. In that sense, wine clubs are more oriented towards discovery.
Wine clubs also come in a number of different flavors. A lot of wine clubs are specific to a winery, which is great if you love that winery but the variety of the wines you get with those clubs is inherently limited. Other wine clubs might focus on a region, giving you more variety, but are still somewhat focused on a niche. Finally, some wine clubs go broad and include wines from around the world.
The folks at Wine Insiders Club reached out to me recently and sent me a few wines to introduce me to their wine club. When I started exploring their offering I was trying to figure out what distinguishes them from all the other wine clubs out there. A few things caught my attention.
First was that they offer both a wine club as well as an online wine shop. That means when you discover a wine you like through the club, you can likely purchase more of that specific wine — if it’s still in stock. They don’t focus on a specific producer or region, rather the world is their oyster. So, the breadth of what you can discover through them is nearly endless. Like many wine clubs they do allow you to choose between red wine, white wine or both.
I wouldn’t say there’s a clear theme for this wine club, except maybe bargain prices… which is a theme I love. Their current price to join the club is $89 for an initial shipment of 15 wines. That amounts to just $5.93 per bottle! It doesn’t get much better than that. Or does it? They also give new members a fancy, 7-piece corkscrew kit, making that deal even sweeter.
As with any wine club, you’re signing up for a subscription and they send periodic additional shipments. After your initial shipment of wine, Wine Insiders Club sends 6 shipments per year with 12 bottles in each shipment. The price for those subsequent shipments is higher at $139.95, plus $19.95 for shipping, plus sales tax. That makes subsequent shipments add up to over $13 per bottle all in, which is still reasonable — although not quite the steal as their initial shipment. However, you can cancel at any time.
In terms of the quality of the wine, what they sent me was a mixed bag. There were a couple that I loved, like The Cleaver which is a very food-friendly red blend, and The Modernist which is a zippy riesling with a nice mineral characteristic. A few of the other wines were also good, but there was one I didn’t like at all, Lythium Red Blend. Now that might not sound like a ringing endorsement, but here’s the thing that wins me over, they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. That means if you receive a bottle that you do not like in your subscription order you can notify them and Wine Insiders will exchange it for a new one free of charge. That certainly takes some of the risk out of joining a wine club.
All in all, if you’re interested in joining a wine club that gives you a chance to try a wide range of wines at good prices, I’d say Wine Insiders Club is worth a try.
Disclosure: Wines sampled in preparation for this article were received as media samples.
