The 3 Best Wine Clubs of 2022 Leave a comment
We looked for clubs that ship quality wines and offer a good value—but the better subscription services tend to be pretty expensive. We’ve also outlined some common pitfalls you should be aware of before signing up, and we offer advice on how to choose a wine club if our recommended picks don’t meet your specific needs.
Our pick
Wine Access
This is one of the best clubs for learning about wine, with somm-selected bottles starting at around $25. Wine Access’s customer service and temperature-controlled shipping stood out, but it ships only four to six times per year.
Choose Wine Access if you want bottles selected by sommeliers and you’re eager to learn more about the wine you drink. This club immediately stood out for its transparency about the selection process, range of wines, educational materials, and free temperature-controlled shipping (a rarity among most subscription services). Of its five club options, we tested The Discovery Club, which includes six bottles of wine focused on a changing quarterly theme. Each wine comes with a detailed information page, which provides an overview of the winemaker and region, as well as tasting notes and suggested food pairings.
Although we would have preferred a bit more variety with the selection of red wines in our order, it’s clear Wine Access puts a lot of thought into its club experience. We didn’t test its Wine Folly Wine Club, but we think it would be another great option for wine nerds who want to learn about specific regions and styles of wine. Among the wine clubs we tested, Wine Access’s customer service was also the best, and this club ships to the most states. It also offers gift cards in a range of denominations.
Our pick
SommSelect
SommSelect is another great club for learning about wine, with sommelier-selected bottles starting around $25. This one is a better choice if you prefer a monthly shipment or you want to build your own case. Customer service is less responsive, though, and there are fewer à la carte bottles under $30.
If you want more-frequent shipments than you get from Wine Access, SommSelect is another great option for wines chosen by sommeliers. We tested its least expensive club, The Explore 4, which includes four monthly bottles focused on a changing theme. We liked all of the wines in our shipment, and we appreciated the varied styles and regional representation of the bottles we received. Like Wine Access, SommSelect provided extensive information about the wines in its shipments. If you’d rather pick your own wines, SommSelect has another club that allows you to build your own case (Wine Access also lets you buy cases, but not as part of a subscription). SommSelect also has curated club gift packs, if you want to send wine as a gift or you don’t want to commit to a subscription. For a fee, to prevent spoilage SommSelect ships its wine using an ice pack in the summer months; this is one of the few wine clubs that offer this option. Unlike Wine Access’s customer service, SommSelect’s was slower to respond (each time we called, we had to leave a voicemail and wait for a representative to get back to us).
Budget pick
Martha Stewart Wine Co. Wine Club
This is the best club for stocking up on inexpensive, everyday sipping wines (bottles average around $13), with 12 shipped every 12 weeks. The selections were mostly decent, but this service feels less personalized than our other recommendations.
If you entertain often and you have room to store a lot of bottles at once, the Martha Stewart Wine Co. Wine Club may be a good fit for you. Of all the subscription services we tested, this club offers the lowest price per bottle—just $13 after your initial order, which is less per bottle than at most algorithm-based clubs, like the heavily marketed Winc. The Martha Stewart club ships its orders immediately after you sign up (which is nice if you need a bunch of bottles in a jiffy). The wines in this club weren’t trendy or groundbreaking, but they were good-quality bottles (and better than the ones we received from Winc). We enjoyed many of the wines and thought they’d be suitable to serve guests at a dinner party. There were a handful of duds, but considering how many bottles you receive at once, we don’t find this to be a dealbreaker.
The Martha Stewart Wine Co. Wine Club provides a brief overview of each wine, along with food-pairing suggestions (more-detailed information is provided on the website). If you plan to have your order shipped to your work address (if no one will be home to show ID and sign for your delivery), keep in mind that the box may be too heavy for some people to lift on their own. If you don’t want to commit to the club subscription but you still want a lot of bottles delivered for a party, you can also purchase one-off themed wine packs.
