About Online Wine Clubs

These days, there are many online wine clubs to choose from, as well as local, "offline" wine clubs. Some popular ones include Cellars Wine Club, 4 Seasons Wine Club and the Sunday Times Wine Club.

When deciding whether or not to join one, try and find out how they choose the wines they send you. Also find out how much flexibility they give you...can you choose just reds? A certain varietal? Wines from a certain winery?

Some people like to be surprised and are willing to try whatever they send. Others are much more particular. If you're one of the latter, find out if you can speak to a person over the phone who can help advise you.

Mark Aselstine is co-owner of Uncorked Ventures, an online wine club based in California. Below is a brief interview which gives his experienced perspective.

Q: What do you advise someone who can't decide between joining an individual winery's wine club versus an online wine club?

Mark: I think it makes sense to point out that both my business partner and I still belong to individual wineries' wine clubs, despite owning our business. I think an individual winery can provide a ton of value by offering private events, barrel tastings, private tasting accommodations and of course, access to winery owners and winemakers.

I do think there are advantages to both models. One reason I love not being affiliated with either one winery, or even a number of wineries as a distributor is that I can pick and choose the best wines for my clubs and if we don't like a winery's wine in a specific vintage, we don't have to try and sell it.

Q: Can an online wine club provide more variety and better quality wines than what many people might be able to find locally?

Mark: For an online club, we've patterned our business after one simple thought: Find better wine which isn't available to consumers across the country. I don't mind sharing that my wife is a high school counselor, so we've been living in San Diego during our first 18 months in business and commuting to the Bay Area (until a move later this summer) and the differences in selection from San Francisco to San Diego for wine is frankly striking. When I compare to the selection that my family in Buffalo, NY has the differences are even more stark.

Q: What should a prospective member look for in an online wine club?

Mark: Like any business, there are going to be good online wine clubs and others which aren't so good. I have a ton of respect for a few of my competitors, while others are creating private labels to maximize profits. I think private labels can work incredibly well for wine clubs because they maximize profits, but consumers are left without a working winery to visit and lose much of the romance which is generally tied to wine.

Our customers want to know something about the winemaker, vineyard owner and have a winery which they can visit directly, or even join their wine club. We may well use private labels for our export program, but in my opinion it isn't a fair way to sell wine to consumers.

Q: How do you choose the wines that you offer to your wine club members?

Mark: I think the best online wine clubs offer access to wines which you would not normally be able to acquire. To me, the key is building relationships over time. A couple of brief examples, we shipped a winery in Paso Robles called Alta Colina last year, specifically their 0900 Syrah. That wine was scored at 92 points if memory serves by Robert Parker, was only around 100 cases in production and was only sold to their own wine club members and our club members.

Secondly, we recently shipped a Quivet Cellars Kenefick Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon. I've been talking with Chris Maybach of Maybach Vineyards about an allocation for some time and happened to ask him what else he has been drinking of late. He mentioned that one of the assistant winemakers on Thomas Brown's crew at both Outpost and Schrader has recently started his own label. We met with Mike Smith and came away incredibly impressed at the wines. These are classic Napa in every form. Quality is quite high (a vineyard designate Cab received a 97 from Spectator) and production is again under 100 cases per wine. He was so impacted with orders that he ended up having to buy back some of his wine from retailers in order to hold other industry tastings.

But whether you live smack in the middle of Napa Valley or a thousand miles from the nearest vineyard, joining an online wine club can be a great experience if the proprietor really has a depth of knowledge and passion for finding a variety of fabulous wines to share with the wine club members each and every month.

For more information about Mark's online wine club, click on Uncorked Ventures.

Related pages:

California Wine Clubs
Sonoma Wine Club Directory
About Monthly Wine Clubs
4 Seasons Wine Club
About the California Wine Club
New York Times Wine Club
Cellars Wine Club
About The Sunday Times Wine Club

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