OT - Wine club's

CyclingBantam

Is anyone a member of any wine clubs?

I am growing more and more interested in Wine as I get older and would like to educate myself a little. What benefits do you get from a wine club as opposed to just trying any old plonk from Tescos?

Anyone got any wine club recommendations?

Clever Pun

do you mean things like the wine society or groups where you all talk about a bottle of wine

wine tastings are good, you get a lot of exposure to different wines

sketchley

Some are better than others.

Better ones actually take the time to find good wines to resell. Laithwaits spring to mind.

Other as just there to sell you any old plonk in bulk. No names mentioned but normally found in sunday suplements.

All of them want to sign you up to recieve a number of bottles a month, no obligation you understand but you have to cancel. And you get inundated with junk mail.

Nothing beats a good independent wine shop although they are few and far between, if in south west london vin bin in worcester park is worth a visit. Looks like any old off license but the couple that run it are passionate about wine.

asprilla

Sketchley wrote:

Better ones actually take the time to find good wines to resell. Laithwaits spring to mind.

Other as just there to sell you any old plonk in bulk. No names mentioned but normally found in sunday suplements.

Hate to tell you, but the Sunday Times Wine club is Laithwaits, it's completely administered and supplied by them.

SimonAH

Yup ST works for me on price, but I'd be interested in a more eductional / technical group.

daviesee

I joined Virgin wines and enjoyed it for a while. Especially when they gave me a free upgrade to the quality wine when I threatened to leave.
I learned what I liked and what I did not (but none offensive). I also learned that upping your budget can be beneficial - if you know what to get.
I don't regret it and it is a good introduction to learn but only for a short while. The most cost efficient method is to try the special offers in the supermarket and take it from there but you will get a lot of wines you don't like on that route.
I am not a member of a club now but feel that I have served an apprenticeship

Wrath Rob

I use Sunday Times to buy a lot of my wine. The last Cote du Rhone case I got from them was fantastic. I'll be ordering some of the wines from them as 1/2 cases soon. However, its not so good if you want to learn about wine itself. For that you need to get tasting. The best way is to get to some tasting events, try the different varieties, speak to the importer/grower and learn why you like the wine, e.g. the grape variety, the country, the grower etc.

For example, there is a Sunday Times event coming up where you can try over 200 wines back to back (or on your back by the time you finish them!).

If you're more serious, have a look for wine courses. I went on a Berry Bothers and Rudd "Old world wines" course. It was fantastic, 2 hours a week over 6 weeks of learing about wine and trying 12-15 different ones each night. My favourite was the Loire and Champagne week. We tasted 5 different Loire Valley wines followed by 10 different champagnes. When would you get an opportunity to do that normally? The only down side is the cost, about £360. But you learn so much from the course and try wine you would never normally try. I learned that I really like the Spanish Alberino wine, but hate anything and everything from Alsace.

Once armed with something like that, the wine clubs are more useful as you can identify what you do actually want to try and order the right sample case. If you get it wrong you can normally return the wine or ask for a refund. I ordered 3 Sancerre's from ST (Laithwaites), which they'd run out of and sent me a replacement. I didn't like it, phoned them up and they credited my account what I'd paid. Plus I kept the wine as it didn't make sense for them to courier 2 bottles back.

PM me if you're interested in joining as I think I get a bonus for an introduction and I think you might too.

lost_in_thought

Asprilla wrote:

Sketchley wrote:

Better ones actually take the time to find good wines to resell. Laithwaits spring to mind.

Other as just there to sell you any old plonk in bulk. No names mentioned but normally found in sunday suplements.

Hate to tell you, but the Sunday Times Wine club is Laithwaits, it's completely administered and supplied by them.

Beat me to it!

I like the STWC. They sell me some great wine!

asprilla

I'm fortunate enough to have a Laithwaits shop round the corner so we can go there for tasting evenings and a bit of educations.

I now do my wine shopping on an anual basis; I go on holiday to France and put between 70 and 100 bottle of wine in the car to bring home. Much better value.

sketchley

I didn't know the STWC = Laithwaits. But i do hapen to like the sunday times wine reviews so it make some sense. For example thier Best Wines under £5 which they do from time to time is excellent.

I do stand by what I said though, some Wine clubs like Laithwaits (add STWC to that as its the same thing) are excellent as they take time to find good wines at cheap prices for thier members. Others are not so good and are just flogging cheap plonk with little regard to quality, you can find such example in the sunday suplements (just not the sunday times).

Similar goes for pubs and resturants, some take time finding good wine particularly good house wine and take pride in it. Other find the cheapest white and red they can knowing a number of people will just order Red or White without thinking. Big margins lie this way, I know for example of big hotels buying 99p red wine then selling it as house wine for 19.99. Wine club are no different there are good ones and bad ones but all of them will send you endless junk mail.

clarkey cat

i do Virgin Wines and its okay to keep the wine rack topped up and to stop going back to the same old bottles in waitrose. but I still go to independents when looking for something really great.

this is a great way of trying some seriously top wines for not much cash.

http://www.thesampler.co.uk/store/

asprilla

If you want to go a bit off the beaten track then look at Naked Wine. The specialise in helping market small growers and they have some great offers. I've had some decent Chilian white from them recently and that's something I never though I would say in a million years.

HamishD

If I wasn't in the wine trade and hence didn't get staff discount on all my booze I would shop at the Wine Society . . . http://www.thewinesociety.com/default.a ... eSupport=1

Really good wines at not a lot of money.

snooks

We tend to get a lot of our wine from http://www.nakedwines.com/

We put £20 in a month, and get 33% cash back into our account on anything we buy.

Every now and again we'll order a case, it turns up the next day and we drink it. We mostly buy new world reds and they have some cracking bottles.

Anything else we just look for the half price bottles on the top shelf of the local supermarkets, £10 bottles for £5 and not bad for week day drinking

Decant them and let them warm up, and the bottle goes in no time...

Canny Jock

I would stay away from the Laithwaits options, and can highly recommend The Wine Society. A non-profit making co-operative which carries a lot of interesting stuff. Haven't used naked wines but looks interesting.

I have the opposite view to some of the above, Laithwaits et al try and win customers by offering discounted cases up front, then obviously have to make profits after that.

@HamishD - wine industry eh, fancy offering some forum discounts :-)

edhornby

D Byrne's and Co - based in clitheroe, they are an independant wine merchant and they regularly win awards for quality of wines, customer service

they do free deliveries up to a certain distance, I'm pretty sure they do tastings as well, they have an internet site (not full on internet sales but enough) but the best thing to do is go in person to the shop and have a chat

tip; go and look in the boxes for random end of line wines, you can get some STUNNING bargains