Beer / Wine of the month clubs?
Newly 21, I am looking to give my parents each a unique gift this Christmas. For my father, I’d like to get him a subscription for a ‘beer of the month’ type deal. For my mother I’m looking for the same thing, except wine.
Money isn’t too much of an obstacle (within reason, I’m a working college student)
Anyone have any recommendations?
Tagged with: beer of the month • christmas • money • obstacle • parents • wine
Filed under: All Things Wine
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Beer i dont know.
Wine i know. here are the only two i would recommend followed by my reasons for why wine of the month clubs are a bad idea for most people.
wine.com
3 levels, great gifts generally good to great quality wines at all levels. i was with them for 6 month only left when i got a job in the wine world.
http://www.cawineclub.com
the same info as before. this differs in that here if you dont like a wine for any reason you can get a full refund of the cost of the wine. Almost no other club does this and i think that makes this one amazing.
ok. Now on to why wine of the month clubs are a bad idea for most people:
As someone who works in the wine industry i can say that a wine bottle is NOT a light weight item and is therefore expensive to ship. It is not unreasonable to expect to pay $6 to $10 shipping PER BOTTLE. that means if you get 2 bottles that is enough for one moderately good bottle of wine.
Wine clubs have a limited reach. They are limited in what they can offer. They have to offer wines that are produced in good to great numbers and that most people will like. This means that its members may miss out on things that THEY would like but others may not.
Instead as someone who was in 3 wine clubs for many months and currently works in the industry, i think the best use of your money would be to get Her into a consumer level wine course. These courses are meant to be fun and exciting. They offer persons a great chance to taste many different wines at a fraction of the cost of buying the bottles. Most Consumer level wine classes taste 6 to 10 wines per meeting.
So the math works out like this:
wine club charges 15 per bottle for two different wines. Thats 30 plus 20 for shipping thats 50 minus the members discount that 45 for two months thats $90. $90 to try just 4 wines that you may or may not like. if you dont like them you can get the money back for the wines but not the shipping so you are out $40 and may not have learned anything other than what wines you didnt like.
Compare with a wine class:
$90 for one session in a group with 24 other adults. You get to learn a lot about wine in a relaxed environment, can learn about free wine tastings in your area, and get to taste say 8 different wines. You dont like 4 of them but you do like 4 of them and you learned something about why you liked it (the style, region, grape, and or vintage.)
Set this way a class is better if you have quality courses in your area.