The first wine club I ever joined was not a club at all. It was a handshake with a producer in the Rhone valley in 1984, who agreed to set aside two cases of his Cotes du Rhone each year for me to import. I would get a postcard in spring, send a check, and the wine would show up in the summer. Susan and I would open the first bottle on the porch and decide, after one quiet pour, whether the vintage was a keeper. That was my wine club, and in some ways it still is.
What we now call a wine of the month club is a tidier version of that arrangement. Someone with a palate selects a handful of bottles. A truck shows up. You drink, you take notes if you are the note-taking sort, and next month another box arrives. As a gift, especially for a sibling or an old friend who has reached the age where they do not need another sweater, it is hard to beat. As a way to broaden your own pour at the dinner table, it is a quiet pleasure.
What These Clubs Actually Do for You
The honest pitch is this. Most of us, left to our own devices, buy the same four or five wines over and over. A Malbec we trust, a Sancerre for summer, a Chianti from a producer we visited once. That is not a bad thing. But a club, run by someone who tastes for a living, will gently push you out of that loop. One month it is a Carignan from the Languedoc. The next it is a Verdejo from Rueda. You learn that Spain makes a white that holds its own against most Sauvignon Blanc, and you would not have learned that in your local supermarket aisle.
The other honest piece: a club is a calendar. Susan and I started treating club night the way some couples treat date night. Two glasses, the bottle, maybe a wedge of Manchego, and forty-five minutes at the kitchen table. The wine is the excuse. The conversation is the point.
How to Choose One Without Getting Burned
The category has been through a tumble in the last few years. Winc, which once was the loudest name in the space, filed for Chapter 11 at the end of 2022 and the brand has been quiet since. So vet any club before you hand over a card. A few things I look at:
- Who is choosing the wine? A real wine club lists its buyer or sommelier by name. If the curator is anonymous, the algorithm is curating, and an algorithm has not yet learned what a producer's third pressing tastes like.
- Can you skip a month? Life happens. A club that lets you skip without a phone call is a club run by people who respect your time.
- What is the per-bottle math? A reputable club lands most bottles in the $15 to $25 range, with the premium tiers running $25 to $40. If a club is sending you a $9 bottle and calling it a discovery, it is not.
- Is the producer information real? A short note about the vineyard, the soil, the producer's family is the difference between a club and a subscription box.
A Quick Word on Where They Can Ship
Shipping wine across state lines used to be a small civil war. It has gotten much easier. As of 2025, all but one state, Utah, allows some form of direct-to-consumer wine shipping. Mississippi joined in July of 2025. Arkansas and Delaware have added their own frameworks, though with strings attached, and a number of states still draw a hard line between shipments from a winery and shipments from a retailer. If you are gifting to someone in another state, check the club's shipping FAQ before you sign your name to the card. Nothing flattens a Christmas morning quite like a held-up case at a distribution center in Cincinnati.
Clubs to Look At, and What They Do Well
I will name a few that I have either bought from or watched friends in the trade rate well. This is not a ranked list. It is a starting place.
For the curious beginner
Firstleaf builds a profile from a short questionnaire and adjusts based on your feedback. It is friendly, the bottles arrive in the modest end of the range, and the educational notes are written for people who do not yet know what carbonic maceration is. A reasonable gift for a son or daughter who is just starting to keep wine in the house.
For the steady drinker
The Wine of the Month Club, which has been running in California since the 1970s, sends three bottles a month and lets you pick red, white, or mixed. The wines lean toward small-production California and Oregon producers. Nothing flashy. The kind of bottles you can put on a Tuesday table without ceremony.
For the Europhile
The International Wine of the Month Club, particularly its Premier Series, leans toward producers from France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. If you have a friend whose shelf is a quiet love letter to the Old World, this is the one. The notes that ship with each pair of bottles read like a producer profile from a wine magazine, which I appreciate.
For the curious supporter of small producers
Naked Wines, in its current form, is a kind of patronage model. You put $40 a month into an account and use that credit to buy wines from independent winemakers the club helps fund. They claim 150,000 active members. The wines are uneven but the model is honest, and you are knowingly putting money in a producer's hand rather than a distributor's.
Gifting It Well
A few small things I have learned over the years about giving a wine club as a gift.
- Buy three months, not twelve. A year is a commitment. Three months tells you whether the recipient enjoys it before it becomes a habit you funded.
- Tuck a note in the first box. Not from the club, from you. A handwritten line about why you thought of them with this gift. The bottle is forgotten in a month. The note is not.
- Match the tier to the table. A daughter in her thirties hosting her first dinner parties needs a different set of bottles than a brother-in-law who has been collecting Burgundy since the Reagan administration. Ask the club's customer service to suggest a tier. They will, and gladly.
- Confirm the address and the over-21 signature requirement. Every state requires an adult signature on delivery. A wine club gift left to wander a porch is a wine club gift that gets returned to the warehouse.
One Last Thing
If you are buying a club for yourself, my one piece of advice is to let it teach you something. Keep a small notebook by the wine rack. One line per bottle. Producer, region, vintage, what you ate with it, whether you would buy it again. After six months you will know more about your own palate than ten years of casual drinking ever told you. That is the quiet gift these clubs give you. Not the wine. The attention.