What is a wine club?
A wine club is simply a collective of wine lovers that have banded together to save money by buying wines in bulk.
Many large bricks and mortar, and online businesses have taken up the baton by offering their own wine clubs for the public to buy into.
For example the Sunday Times newspaper in the UK offers a wine club that offers significant savings when compared to buying from a normal off license or even supermarket.
They can offer award winning wines for seemingly impossible prices. Whether these are loss leaders or not remains to be seen. I suspect most are, they are hoping for a long term relationship with most of their members so the money lost on introductory offers is recouped in the following months.
The canny amongst us would sign up for a number of these wine clubs to take advantage of their special introductory wines and then cancel the membership without taking any subsequent deliveries. Taking care to move onto the next club before their cellar stock dwindled too low.
Apart from saving money this is one good way to test the market for a good wine club. Keep moving about until you discover one that does indeed offer ongoing value for money and reasonable wines. Note I said reasonable. You cannot expect outstanding quality wines for very low prices in the long term. They will throw a couple of good bottles into the mix every now and again but do not come to expect this. Be happy that you are drinking a little bit better than Joe Public and are paying less for the privilege.
So in summary, a wine club can be a good investment but only if you take the time to hunt out the best in the market. Good hunting.