Don't laugh... Wine Clubs

belong to several wine clubs, and have some good and some bad. Too general a question, but one thing I do, as I live in a wine country area: pickup is best, getting free samples is great since I'm so close, parking the Ferraris near the entrance: priceless.

 

I belong to some online wine clubs, here in Portugal.

It's a good way to increase our knowledge about wine and to increase our cellar.
Mostly portuguese wines but also some spanish and french

 

SO: rather than shop for a wine club direct from a winery, you want a club that is on the internet?

My suggestion is, find the wines you like, then go on-line to that wine's site, and subscribe to their product: usually they have a choice such as all white, red, mix, premium, etc. etc.

rik PS : Good to know NE has a taste for wine.

 

Definitely agree with SonomaRik about going with clubs direct from the winery. More consistent wine direct from a good winery.

A suggestion might be Miner Family out of Napa. They do some nice reds and whites. Another might be Chateau St. Michele out of Washington State.

If you are getting into wine you are very likely to evolve your taste over time. Are you looking for the hard to find items or just a bit better than you may be finding locally. The local problem can many times be solved by becoming a good enough customer that they offer you the limited supply releases they receive.

Be careful about some of the mass market wine clubs. They will sometimes be the dumping ground for what has not otherwise been saleable.

Jeff

 

Sounds like great advice on both the direct route and the mass appeal clubs. Try a winery, if it's not for you try another. Plenty out there. For probably $30 you can subscribe to a nice wine magazine with reviews and get some ideas that way as well.

Look up Peju Province in CA, they've got a nice wine club I've participated in. Great Cab Franc.

 

Wine clubs are a great way to try some good wines at a decent price. We do a couple that are direct from the wineries. We've had good luck with Sterling...not all good but enough good to pass muster.

 

I belong to one wine club. Met the family on a club outing and really liked their wines so when I got home I signed up for the club. They only send out a few shipments a year and I have yet to get anything of theirs I didn't like. Give them a look...http://www.dunhamcellars.com/

 

A good friend of mine belongs to one and raves about it. Very enjoyable to hang out.

 

This room is in a house for sale near here.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

I've belonged to Gold Medal Wine Club for several years. We get four bottles per month. I'm in their basic plan and we've had good luck with almost all of the wines. It's a pretty good deal, especially if you live in an area that has limited access to smaller boutique wines. We take notes on the ones that are our favorites and have even visited some of the wineries (in Napa) as a result. The previously mentioned Peju was an early wine club wine and has now really taken off. Another plus is they sometimes ship to states that don't typically allow wine shipments in quantity.

 

Both great recos.

My wife is a sommelier, feel free to pass along any questions.

 

I think the Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery would be a good choice for someone who is looking to join a wine club that has good quality/value WA State wines at reasonable prices.
http://www.ste-michelle.com/Main_Aboutwineclub.cfm

I'm lucky to live in WA state where there are lots of very high quality boutique wineries about a half hour drive from my home: Betz Family, DeLille, Mark Ryan, Matthews, Gorman, Cadence, etc...

The only wine club that I am in right now is "Andrew Will Winery," which is on Vashon Island, WA.

 

Vashon!!!

I love the island, got one of my marriages there once, but wine? really? seems a bit under the weather for wine....unlesssss, is it ice wine

CSM, I remember when it started, I was at the UofI, and bought only local [don't tell the family...they'll send Guido again] and that like started about early 70's as I recall.

rik

 

Look for Noble One from Austrailia. De Bortoli is the producer.

Profiles exactly like d'Yquem, Noble One does age too. 1/10 the cost. De Bortoli is confident enough that at a trade tasting the put it up against d'Yquem in a blind.

For some great sparkling you probably have no idea about - Gruet in New Mexico. Surporised the sh*t out of us in a tasting.

dasMafia - You have a lot of one bottles. It is time to start buying in quantity so there is another one to drink on another day after the first bottle is gone. This also allows you to experience how they taste as they age.

Come to St. Louis in late January. There is a huge benefit wine and food event. The reserve room always has great wines and this year they are having an extra event the night before that will have wines that are extremely scarce. For a couple of years running they have poured horizontals of Gaja. Anthony Truchard was there pouring last year. Major Brands and Premier Cru are two of the big distributors that support the event with their portfolios.

Jeff

 

Rik,

Yep, believe it or not! The grapes are trucked over from Eastern WA, and then on a Ferry to Vashon Island. Here's their web site: www.andrewwill.com

Great wine!

 

dasMafia...not sure what your goals are with your wine. As others stated, you seem to be buying singles. Odd collection started. At glance, first impression is you are trying to build a showpiece vs a drinking cellar.

I don't know your level of knowledge, so forgive if I get to rudimentary here. If you are looking to build a show piece, give up on the generic wine club. You need to buy whatever the Wine Spectator tells you to buy. Now if you are wanting to learn about wine and turn it into a drinking passion, then you have tons of options open to you.

First, the best way to build your palette is to drink... alot! But while you are doing this, you also need to become a sniffer and I'm not talking just about what's in the glass. Cooking is an ideal learning experience with learning wine. Smell EVERYTHING. Raw meat, cooked meat, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, cherries, apriot preserves, you name it, you smell it. This will give you reference points you can draw on to discribe what you are smelling when you drink wine. Remember, taste is actually smell. If you can't smell, you cannot taste.

Now that you are smelling everything and building up the file cabinet in your head, its time to read. Wine for Dummies is an excellent place to start. As your knowledge grows, The Oxford Companion to Wine is Awesome.

OK, so while you are sitting around reading your new wine book, you need to pour a glass of wine. Study it, play with it, love it. And then move onto whatever wines you can get your hands on. Don't focus just on Old World wines, look to the New World wines from the hotter climates. Compare and contrast. If you don't like one region today, remember that vintages change with the weather, so go back and try past ones again. Experiment. This is the fun part.

Find some friends that share your interest in wine and get together monthly for a tasting. Set a theme. Brown bag the wines and discuss. Rate them if you want, then unvail. There wil be times when the $8 wine kills the $100 wine. Good lesson to not buy just becuase of $$$.

As your experience increases and you understand better what you do and don't like, you need to experiment with aged wines vs new wines. I personally prefer at least 5 years of bottle age. No way I can get away buying a single, but if I like it new and I have a history with the winery and how their wines age, I buy 1-2 cases and set them back for at least 5 years. Then I get to start playing and pulling one out every now and then. Recently killed off my last 1990 of one wine I really loved. I went through 3 cases over the years and it was worth it.

Wine is obviously a great joy of mine. Killed me to move from Calif wine country to Indiana, but life is cheaper here and no traffic. Scared me to move the cellar too. We were just discussing that subject tonight.

 

Wonderful grounds at CSM, great concert venue and a nice place to take a date or friends from out of town, but as the 2nd largest wine producer in the Nation, Washington State has many options. Some of the smaller, more specialized wines have a bit more focus to them.

For example, DiStefano winery was recently voted WA winery of the year
announcement:
http://www.distefanowinery.com/wine_of_year.pdf

YouTube announcement "WA Winery of the Year"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhYWAR6SuRQ

 

For storage right now, you just need a place in your house that is consistent in temp. An inside closet or a corner in the basement. I started with a coat closet in the middle of an apt. Eventually a basement in a house provided the space needed.

Wine is a living thing. It enjoys consistence. So you read the ideal temp is 55 degrees and your closet is 70 degrees. So what. Its better for the wine to stay at that constant 70 degrees than to swing from 60 to 80 degrees. For our non-US friends...I'm obvciously talking F vs C. Ouch! LOL!

For your current buying pattern of singles, its not like you are looking to set anything aside for long, so a year or three isn't going to hurt you or the wine. Once you start to develop your palette and start buying in quantity, you'll run into the storage issue. Then is when a cellar, basement, etc really come into play. Not sure you need to worry about that now.

Go build you palette, learn, enjoy, experiment, have fun with the joy that wine brings. Then you can worry about building some cellar. FWIW, my own cellar was built to over 1000 bottles with ZERO thought to selling a single bottle. Too much fun to enjoy with friends and food to bother with selling. It'd be like selling children to me.

Now then...back to this glass of 1999 California Petite Sirah...enjoy!