What are we without wine? Wine is an essential part of meals, gatherings, and celebrations and has been enjoyed by people for thousands of years. Today you can enjoy your wine in a multitude of ways, whether it be in a bottle, a can, bag, or delivered to your door. Yep, that’s right, delivered to your door. With meal-kits, like Hello Fresh and Blue Apron on the rise, why not have wine delivered straight to your door? Companies, like Winc make getting the wines you love more accessible and affordable. And wine delivery services let you discover new types of wine and brands.
Winc
If you’re wanting a wine subscription that’s monthly, has a sliding scale of affordability, and gives whole bottles instead of glasses, Winc could be what you’re looking for. Winc’s mission is to find new and interesting ways to give wine drinkers tasty, quality wine that’s under $15 a bottle. You can always upgrade the wine if you’re looking for something a little more sophisticated. Winc knows that not all wines are for every palate, their wine club is one that you can tailor to meet your wine drinking needs. If that doesn’t sound like music to your ears, then this will, Winc is the #1 Rated Modern Wine Club!
How Does It Work?
You’ll start by answering a 6-question quiz about your palate and wine preferences. From there, Winc will send you a variety of wines based on your quiz results, and when you receive the wines you can rate the wines to get better recommendations sent to you.
Compared to other wine clubs, Winc is more affordable; bottles of wine start at $12.99.
For $39 a month you’ll get three bottles sent to your house, and $13 for an additional bottle added. There are two subscription levels: Featured and Select. Under the Featured plan, Winc will send you bottles priced at $12.99. For the Select plan, Winc will recommend bottles priced between $14 and $35 a bottle. Based on what bottles you select, your monthly payment will vary.
A great thing about the Winc wine club is that there are no membership fees, a flat shipping rate of $9, and you can quit at any time.
Tasting Room
If you’re a passionate wine drinker who loves drinking international wines, then the Tasting Room has the wines for you. Tasting Room gives you fine wines for a fine price, they’ve got bottles starting at $13, which is a better deal than going to your local wine shop to buy a bottle of wine.
The Tasting Room believes that “wine should be accessible, fun to learn about, and easy to enjoy”. They work directly with winemakers across the globe, and then bottle that wine at their plant in California and then ship it directly to your door for lower than MSRP value.
How Does It Work?
Tasting Room has you take a short quiz to get an idea of your palate, what you like and dislike, and if you’re more of red or white wine type of person. From there, they will send you a 6-mini wine bottle kit for $9.95, so they can further understand your palate. After you’ve tried the 6-mini bottles of wine, you can tell them which ones out of the six that you were/were not impressed with. Taste Room then sends you a personalized wine shipment that matches your taste buds. You can choose your shipment dates and frequency, specify the number of bottles per shipment, and the type of wine.
For 6 bottles of wine, it is $149, plus shipping and sales tax.
FirstLeaf
The FirstLeaf experience is a truly customized wine drinking experience, and it’s awarded as “America’s #1 Wine Club”. So what makes this wine club different from others? First off, their algorithm takes each unique taste bud into account, a lot of wine club’s quizzes ask you “what’s your favorite type of chocolate?”, “Are you a coffee drinker?”, or “what’s your favorite fruit?”. But, FistLeaf’s wine club quiz does not group tastebuds together, they work on an individual level. With over 500,000 customer ratings, FirstLeaf’s system can confidently predict what wines you’ll love.
Their algorithm learns what wine club members will drink, and they get that data through constantly updating their wine profiles with new ratings. Another cool thing about FirstLeaf is that they have a wine concierge service, that hand-selects wine for club members and people can schedule a wine consolation with one of the wine concierge team members. Aside from their great service, this is also an affordable wine subscription package: $79.95 for 6 bottles!
How Does It Work?
First, you’ll start by taking an in-depth 13-question quiz. A neat feature to their quiz is that it has a sliding scale on it, so FirstLeaf and you can get a better idea of what your likes and dislikes are. Once you complete the quiz, FirstLeaf will send you an introductory order based on the quiz results. After you’ve tried the wines be sure to rate the wines! By rating them, FirstLeaf will be able to gauge your palate better giving you a more tailored wine-drinking experience in the next box you receive. If you’re unhappy with a particular wine FirstLeaf will credit you for any wine you disliked.
Each shipment of wines is customized to you! From the wine selections to how many bottles you drink, to how often you’d like to receive your shipment. Since FirstLeaf is so customized that can make their pricing not as direct as other wine clubs. That being said a FirstLeaf club membership cost for 6-bottle of wine is $79.95 (plus $9.95 shipping fee), which is an affordable deal compared to other wine clubs. But that’s dependent on how you configure your membership, and how often you want to receive it. Shipments can be made monthly, bimonthly, and quarterly. If you happen to be out of town when your shipment is supposed to arrive, you can easily go on FirstLeaf’s website and change the arrival date.
If you would like to purchase an additional bottle of wine, price-per-bottle ranges from $14.98 to $33.33.
Our Thoughts
In the end, there is a wine subscription box for every type of wine drinker. It may be a little trial-and-error in the beginning to find the right selection of wines and the box that is best for you. Is Winc worth all the hype, or are there better options out there? That’s dependant on you. If you’re a connoisseur of fine wines, love learning about wines, and have the budget to spend, then Winc is definitely for you. Winc offers its members frequent promotions, which is a great way to keep their members interested. With Winc, the more wine boxes you buy the more credits you’ll earn and you can spend those credits on a bottle of wine that you really enjoyed.
This goes for all wine subscription boxes, be sure to check the website to see if they ship to your state. Not all states have the same liquor laws.
