Best Wine Clubs
Affordable
4-bottle or 6-bottle
Available wines change regularly, but they do their best to match your palette. No “all reds” or “all whites” options, however.
Choose between every one, two or three months
Minimal customization Options
Largely positive
Affordable
6-bottle or 12-bottle
Mixed, but you can specify types of wines you don’t want to receive
Monthly
Medium customization options
Positive
Mid-Range
6 bottles in the quarterly “fine wines” plan, or a monthly deposit toward however many bottles you want
Fine Wines quarterly plan provides a mix of both, or you can choose which wines you want monthly
Every one, two or three months
Extremely customizable
Somewhat critical
Mid-Range
3-bottle or 6-bottle
You can choose between “Light Lovers,” “Red Lovers” or “Signature” (mixed) plans
Monthly
Medium customization options
Positive
Very Affordable
3-bottle, 6-bottle or 12-bottle
Mixed
Choose between every one, two or three months
Extremely customizable
Largely positive
For thousands of years, wine has had a special place in many homes and cultures. The most significant difference between wine today and the wine made by our earliest ancestors is accessibility. Today's sommeliers aren't limited to wine available in their regions: Wine can be shipped worldwide, allowing enthusiasts to sample varieties from across the globe.
Whether you're looking to expand your palette with some new bottles of wine or looking for the perfect gift for a wine lover, a wine club subscription may be the way to go.
Our Top Picks For Best Wine Clubs
- Wine Awesomeness: Best Affordable Wine Club
- First Leaf: Best For Large Wine Selection
- Vegan Wines: Best Natural Wine Club
- Naked Wines: Best Customizable Wine Club
- Bright Cellars: Best Wine Club For New Drinkers
Best Wine Club Reviews
Why We Chose It: Wine Awesomeness provides a budget-friendly experience aimed at modern wine enthusiasts looking to experience different vineyards and get to know their personal tastes.
Wine Awesomeness is one of the newer monthly wine clubs on the market. Its target audience is on the younger side, with much of its marketing aimed towards millennials and Gen Zers. This makes sense, as Wine Awesomeness deliberately leans into its role as an affordable wine club.
There are two monthly memberships to choose from with free delivery, and you can personalize your delivery frequency. Subscriptions start at $49/box for the 3-bottle membership and $84/box for six bottles.
Membership perks include:
- 20% off the wine list
- First access to new wine each month
- Access to unlisted wine and small batch run
- Monthly member perks (fun deals, special rewards)
- Wine Cellar access, which includes digital tasting notes, recipe pairings and persona ratings
- Access to a curated wine list
Wine Awesomeness selects each of its wines from unique boutique wineries worldwide. You may receive a bottle of an interesting Californian blend alongside a sweet wine from South Africa.
In addition to providing various options from different wine regions, Wine Awesomeness allows you to update your profile with preferences and rate each wine so that you receive more curated selections in the future. You can also hand-select each wine for a fully-customized experience.
Why We Chose It: First Leaf is a wine club that seconds as an online wine retailer with hundreds of bottles from a wide range of wines made for different palettes.
First Leaf specializes in bringing new wines to your tasting experience. Each month, you'll get a box with six unique wines selected specifically for you. Experienced sommeliers profile each wine; meanwhile, each user's unique taste profile is built using a combination of proprietary technology, quizzes and reviews from previous bottles of wine. As a result, each wine you receive is chosen to uniquely appeal to your preferred flavor palette.
The first box (custom intro order) is $14.99/bottle; after that, the club will cost $89.94 per shipment, with no extra fees. Club member benefits include:
- Tasting & pairing cards
- The club's newsletter
- Wine concierge
First Leaf stands by its taste profiles. In fact, it's so confident that you'll love the wine it selects for you that if you don't love a bottle, it'll replace it with a different bottle of wine on its dime.
Why We Chose It: While there were wine clubs that offered a selection of natural wines, Vegan Wines was the only club we found that specialized exclusively in vegan wines.
Vegan Wines focuses on natural wines and creating a fun and environmentally-friendly experience. If you want to join a wine club that intersects nicely with the personal ethos of vegan or holistic living, this may be the best wine club for your needs.
Vegan Wines has four clubs to choose from:
- The Signature Club contains six bottles of hand selected vegan wines (red, white and sometimes rosé) along with insider wine information, interviews with the winemakers and plant-based recipes to pair with your wines.
- The Red Lovers Club contains six bottles of red wine, plus all the same information and recipes in the Signature Club.
- The Wine & Cheese Club includes everything in the Red Lovers Club with the addition of three wheels of vegan cheeses.
- The Club Sampler Trio contains three bottles of hand-selected wines.
Depending on the particular club, prices will range between $140 and $210 per delivery, plus tax and $20 nationwide shipping.
Although Vegan Wines has a smaller selection than other wine clubs online, each wine is carefully chosen from a winery that follows vegan practices. Many of its bottles are organic as well as vegan. Because it chooses from such specific wineries, many of the wines you'll receive through Vegan Wines can't be found in stores. These unique wines can be fun to sample or share with family or friends, but it can be challenging to reacquire wines you end up liking.
Why We Chose It: Using Naked Wine's wine recommendation system, the Wine Genie, you can have a selection of wines delivered based on your preferences. The more wines you review, the more accurate Wine Genie is at predicting your tastes.
Naked Wines is all about testing wines from independent wine gurus rather than larger, well-known wineries. They have sommeliers on hand to test every type of wine and help pair flavors with customers most likely to appreciate them. But because they work with independent wineries, Naked Wines also places more focus on customer reviews than most other wine clubs we reviewed.
Naked Wines prices its wines independently; if fewer than 90% of its customers are satisfied with a bottle of wine at its current price point, it lowers the cost of that wine. It then refunds any money customers have spent above the new price point, ensuring that wine club members always receive the best price for the bottles of wine they invest in.
Unlike other wine clubs, Naked Wines doesn't automatically ship you bottles of wine. Instead, it charges you credits regularly, which you can use to choose wines from its monthly selection. If you decide not to continue using Naked Wines, any extra money on your account is refunded to you, making this a low-risk wine club option.
If you like the surprise of receiving bottles of wine without choosing them yourself, you can also select its "Wine Genie," which will pick wines for your monthly crate based on your previous wine reviews. We appreciate the level of customization and choice that comes with this wine club, which allows both novice wine drinkers and sommeliers to enjoy this club equally.
Why We Chose It: Bright Cellars is an excellent option if you're not a wine aficionado who already knows their wine preferences. You can provide your food preferences instead of wine preferences and receive wines that pair well with foods you already love.
Bright Cellars is a fun wine club built around the idea that everyone is at a different phase of learning about the wines they love. When you first start your membership, you self-identify as a wine novice or expert. Then, you answer a series of questions ranging from "What one type of chocolate could you eat for the rest of your life?" to "What's your favorite wine pairing?"
Based on the information you provide, Bright Cellars develops your unique flavor palette. You choose between monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly shipping and between four or six bottles of wine, while Bright Cellars picks the specific wines its team of experts believes you'll enjoy based on your answers and previous wine ratings. If you dislike any wine it sends you, Bright Cellars will send you a replacement bottle of a different kind of wine.
If you feel adventurous, you can try Bright Cellars's "mystery wine" with each shipment. This is one bottle of wine selected by their sommelier that they believe all mystery wine recipients should sample. While the Mystery Wine isn't tailored to your tastes like the other bottles of wine, it can be a fun way to stretch your tastebuds and experience wines you might otherwise not pick for yourself.
Other Wine Clubs We Considered
We evaluated nearly thirty wine clubs when determining which clubs should make our list of best wine clubs. While many were discounted early on, there were a few close contenders for the position of best wine club. Here are our top three honorable mentions for best wine clubs.
Winc
Part wine club, part online retailer, Winc's club membership gives you a discount on its wines while encouraging you to choose the wines you want each month from its selection. A close contender for the best natural wine club, Winc gets points for offering natural wines. Ultimately, because it doesn't specialize in natural wines over other types of wines, it didn't outshine Vegan Wines in this area.
SomMailer
If you're looking for a premium wine club subscription, SomMailer offers a selection of high-end wines. Although it had largely positive reviews, its high price point and a smaller selection of available wines kept SomMailer from making the cut as one of the best wine clubs.
WSJ Wines
This quarterly wine club ships twelve wines every three months based on your stated preferences. Each wine comes with a pairing card so that you can decide what foods to drink it with.
While reviews of WSJ Wines are mainly positive, its wine club membership offers less wine annually than other clubs on the list, as well as fewer customization options than wine clubs aimed at newer wine lovers.
Wine Clubs Guide
The best wine clubs capitalize on accessibility, bringing delectable wines from around the world to the subscriber's doorstep. Wine experts work to curate a selection of wine their customers will appreciate — and maybe even repurchase in the future.
What Are Wine Clubs?
Wine clubs provide a subscription-based wine delivery service to subscribers. As a subscriber, you choose how often you want wine delivered based on your wine club's options. With each wine shipment, you receive a few bottles of wine to try.
The goal of wine clubs is to increase wine access for enthusiasts. They allow you to sample wines from different wine regions while increasing your understanding of your tastes and preferences.
How Do Wine Clubs Work?
Each wine club works a little differently, but there are similarities across the board.
Your wine club membership starts when you sign up for a subscription. Many — but not all — wine clubs will take the time to get to know you better. They may offer a short quiz to get to know your personal preferences, with the goal of improving your first shipment.
Some wine clubs will send your first shipment within a few days of your order. For other wine clubs, you may need to wait for their next shipment day, which may be the first day of the month or the first day of the new quarter.
Depending on the wine club, you may be locked into trying whichever wines they choose for you. When your wine shipment arrives, you get to keep the bottles you received. Many wine clubs encourage members to rate each bottle as they try it, which can help them better tailor future shipments to your individual wine preferences. In these wine clubs, the idea is that your shipments should improve as you stay engaged with the club.
What To Consider When Choosing A Wine Club
There are many factors to consider when choosing the right wine club subscription for your needs. If you're purchasing a wine club gift for someone else, you may need to consider giftability as one of the factors.
Other important factors — whether you're purchasing for yourself or someone else — include the types of wine offered, the number of bottles per shipment, the shipment frequency and your budget.
Types Of Wine
Are you looking for a sweet wine club? A red wine club? Something in between?
The wine types offered are among the first things to consider when evaluating a wine club. Some wine clubs, like Vegan Wines, lean into a specific niche, while others strive to provide a variety of wines for all tastes.
Bottles Per Shipment
The next thing to consider is how many bottles you receive in each shipment. Remember that more bottles per shipment are only better if you can drink all the bottles you receive.
Shipment Frequency
Some gift club members look forward to receiving a new shipment every month. Other members prefer quarterly subscriptions. Regardless, the shipping frequency — or choice of shipping frequencies — is an important factor when choosing the right wine club for you.
Your Price Range
If you're living on a tight budget, a subscription to a premium wine club like SomMailer may not be for you. Your budget should take precedence when choosing the best wine club to meet your needs.
Wine Clubs FAQ
How We Chose The Best Wine Clubs
We used several factors when choosing the best wine clubs. These factors included:
- Pricing: We considered the price per bottle and price per plan to help you find the best wine club for your needs without encouraging customers to break the bank.
- Plan options: We evaluated the number of choices you have for your subscription, including whether the plan offered different numbers of bottles or a choice between reds and whites, to help customers find subscriptions tailored to their unique needs.
- Quality of the wines produced: The goal of any wine club is to try new, great wines, so looking at the quality of wines produced and the reviews of wine qualities was a must for us.
- Level of choice and flexibility offered: From whether you can skip months for free to how much you can customize your wine selections, we paid attention to choice and flexibility so you can find a wine club that meets your tastes and needs.
- Wine club reviews and customer ratings: Reading reviews from customers who have subscribed to the wine clubs we reviewed helped us gain more perspective on the customer experience.
- Size of selections: While more options don't always mean better options, wine clubs with a more extensive range of options have the power to better meet customer needs and locate unique options for customers with specific taste buds.
- Interactions with customer service representatives: We reached out to customer service teams and asked basic questions. We also read reviews about interactions with customer service teams to help us recommend the wine clubs most likely to support customers who ran into problems with their memberships.
- Bonuses offered with memberships: Every wine club is unique, and comparing them without acknowledging the factors that make them unique would be a disservice, so we considered bonus offerings — such as pairing suggestions or magazine subscriptions — to help us recommend wine clubs that would offer the best overall value to their members.
