Wine Clubs Are a Crapshoot. Sommeliers Told Us Which Ones Don’t Suck
Wine clubs promise the same thing. Pay a monthly fee and get mystery bottles, so that you can skip the part where you stand in a shop squinting at labels and pretending you know what “structured” means. Or, if you’re like me, you buy wine based on what the label looks like alone.
And some clubs deliver on that. Some of them, though, are just a subscription box with a wine cork glued to the lid.
So we asked sommeliers and wine-industry pros which clubs they’d actually recommend. Here are 12 of them, plus what the pros say separates a real club from a curated cash-grab scam.
The Set Wines
The Set Wines is a Sta. Rita Hills club recommended by Katy Rogers, WSET-certified founding partner at wine marketing agency Likely Story Strategies (formerly 15 years at Jackson Family Wines). There’s no contracts or minimums with this one. Members choose bottle count and timing, earn points toward tastings and merch, and can taste directly with the winemaker on-site—great for if you’re local to the area!
Niner Wine Estates
Another Rogers pick, based in Paso Robles, Niner Wine Estates offers customizable 4, 6 or 12-bottle shipments three times a year with free shipping, plus 20–25% off wine, food and merch at the winery’s on-site restaurant. Members also get access to a free, property-wide members-only week each year.
Explore the Niner Wine Estates Wine Club
Austin Hope Winery
Rogers’ third pick, and the one she frames less around club mechanics and more around treatment, is Austin Hope Winery. She says the Paso Robles winery trains staff (using the hospitality book Unreasonable Hospitality) to add personal touches, like an extra bottle tied to something a member mentioned on a past visit.