Wine Clubs Reddit | Good Advice?

Detail Of Reddit Wine Club Recommendations

Here are more details for each category listed above.

1. Join the wine club of a great local wine retailer

This is great advice if you happen to live close to a well-run wine retailer that offers a monthly or quarterly wine club. Outside of most large cities, this is considerably harder than the commenters on Reddit seem to appreciate. While liquor stores are in every corner of this great nation, there are far fewer specialty wine shops. There are even fewer of these that run monthly wine clubs.

2. Find a winery you love and join their club

Again, this is good advice, but not as easy as it sounds. The majority of wineries are located on the West Coast of the US. While there are plenty of people who live close enough to visit these wineries, you are leaving a huge percentage of the country out of the equation. There are some other drawbacks to this method. Wineries usually focus on a few varietals and make the same wines year after year. There will be variations between vintages, but you will end up with a lot of the same wine.

3. Join the wine club of an independent wine store with a national reach

We like this recommendation, and it can apply to a much larger group of wine enthusiasts. The options specifically mentioned on Reddit included K&L Wine Merchants. You can check our clubs here. D&M is based in the Bay Area. When I look at their clubs, I only see one wine club, and it is focused on Champagne. You can see their clubs here.  Although I don't see a specific mention of it on Reddit, Chambers Street Wines is another larger independent to consider. You can find out about their wine clubs here.

There are a few things to consider. The store-based wine clubs will always be a bit of an afterthought. Their main business is running the store, stocking great wines, and providing in-person recommendations. You can tell from the ad hoc nature of their club pages that this isn't their primary focus.

4. Join a club run by sommeliers

These have been in vogue for the last ten years. The sommelier entered the public (at least wine-drinking public) consciousness in the 2010s. There were movies, shows, podcasts, and websites celebrating the pinnacle of wine knowledge. These hardworking wine brainiacs pounced and learned how to monetize their knowledge outside the dining room.

These clubs are beloved by what we would consider traditional wine snobs on Reddit. The people who quickly downvote any wine under $40 a bottle and disdain most "basic" wine clubs. I'm not saying they are wrong. There are some great wine clubs to consider.

The current darling of this faction is Crunchy Red Fruit. This club falls into two categories as it is also part of a local wine shop in Bellevue, Washington. Crunchy Red Fruit is run by a Sommelier who tastes wines and then curates boxes. You can read all about it here.

After that, the most popular is SommSelect. This is followed closely by mentions of the Somm curated Wine Access.

5. Sign up for one of the better online wine clubs

While the loudest (or at least most long-winded) on Reddit abhor the traditional online wine club, there are some voices brave enough to offer up suggestions. Of these, Picked by Wine.com and NakedWines.com get the most love.

There are also mentions of MyWineCountry, a club established by a group of wineries that offers winery direct shipments with more variety.

I've tried a lot of clubs at this point, and my favorites are listed here.

6. Sign up for a wine club that ships inexpensive wine

These wine clubs are the target of the most ire on Reddit. We understand to a degree. There are clubs like Firstleaf, Winc to a degree, and Vinesse, that dupe unsuspecting wine noobs into paying $15 a bottle for bulk wine. Then they make it impossible to stop the credit card charges as more plonk arrives at your door. We've seen some pretty awful stuff on the Better Business Bureau website.

However, if you know what you are signing up for, these clubs can be a pleasure. You aren't going to cellar any of the wines you get, but many are perfectly drinkable. Most wine consumers aren't looking to pick apart the nuances in a $90 bottle. Most wine consumed in the use sells for less than $12 a bottle. Why begrudge the majority of wine drinkers? These clubs are a great entry point for many and will expose you to varietals and regions you'll never see on the shelves of your local grocery store.

Conclusion

The advice on Reddit is limited. There seems to be a desire on the part of many of the commentators to appear knowledgeable but give little valuable or constructive advice. If you want a list of what you should consider before joining a wine club, click here.

What I like about it is the variety of clubs. When you read the top wine club lists on most Google results, they are the same because those clubs pay the most affiliate commission to the publisher. That's not an issue on Reddit, so you do see more clubs being suggested. Whether the people suggesting them are in some way connected to the club financially is impossible to know.

As with any online recommendation, you need to do your homework and get comfortable with your decision.