Wine Clubs: An Introduction

Before you start jumping into the delicious details of wine regions and perfect pairings, you have to start at the beginning: What exactly is a wine club? A wine club is an online delivery service where a company sends members select bottles of wine on a set delivery basis. Some members may receive up to 12 bottles of wine every month, two months, or three months.

Many wine clubs are extremely customizable. Members often start by choosing if they want reds, whites, or a mix of the two in their first shipments. To ensure members enjoy every wine in a shipment, many wine club companies will have users take tests and rate previously-purchased wines to better filter out future selections.

Not sure if a wine club is for you? Poke around our site to compare our favorite online wine clubs. You can check the price per bottle, unique facts about each company, and even score one-of-a-kind deals. Cheers!

The Two Types of Online Wine Clubs

As you search around wine clubs on our site, you may notice that there are two primary types of wine clubs: monthly clubs and traditional e-commerce sites.

The traditional wine club is simple: members build a tasting profile, choose the rate of shipments and number of bottles they’d like per shipment, and receive hand-picked wine selections on their chosen schedule. A traditional club is a great option for bold wine lovers who want to try unique varieties, or for newcomers to the wine world who want to skip the search for each new bottle.

Traditional e-commerce sites might be more familiar. On an e-commerce site, users simply pick and choose the wines they want, order them, and have them shipped to their door. If you’ve ever shopped for groceries, clothes, or electronics online, this is the same idea (but with wine!).

Some sites offer both club memberships and single- or multi-bottle e-commerce sites. Feel free to look around our site and find the wine seller that works best for you.

Here’s How to Choose the Best Wine Club for You

First, decide whether you want to join a shipped-to-you wine club, or simply shop on a traditional e-commerce site. Check out the section above if you aren’t familiar with the differences.

Second, ask yourself: how familiar am I with wine? Wine pros will have drastically different tastes than their aspiring counterparts. As you click through the wine clubs on our site, it will become obvious pretty quickly whether a specific wine club is for newbies or experts.

Lastly, you want to think about value. Do you want to spend $10 per bottle, or $100? Above simply price, you want to think about quantity. If you’re used to hosting a weekly wine club, you may want to opt-in to a monthly club that sends you six or more bottles. Simply filling up for one? You may only need a bottle or two a month.