What makes a Wine Club great?

I fully realize I am simply one person speaking here about wine clubs, but since we belong to 20 of them I believe we have a pretty good view of the topic from our vantage point as a consumer.  At this point we love each one of them!

Springtime brings with it not only a wonderful slew of wine club shipments, but it’s also the time we spend some time reviewing all our Club memberships in terms of their value to us. We do this with a checklist and accompanying rating system, which we believe eliminates having anything fall in the middle.

Our rating options are poor (1 point), fair (3 points), good (6 points), or excellent (10 points).

This helps us answer the following question we are constantly asking ourselves:

Why do some Clubs stand out while others don’t?

FWIW, here’s the scorecard we use (with annotations).

Rate the relationship this Club has established with us.

• Your relationship with us is our litmus test. Are we a person or a number? Do you actually know anything about us? If you get the 10 point, excellent, rating here we go no further. Your spot is secured for the coming year!

Rate the discount we receive on our orders.

• We enjoy your discount and rate it versus other clubs’ discounts, also if it extends to additional ordering, etc. FYI, we belong to clubs with discounts from 0 to 30%. It’s nice, but has never been a deal-breaker.

Rate the flexibility we have with our Wine Club ordering.

• Is there any flexibility in what we can order? For instance, can we go ‘all red’? Can we opt out of a wine in the coming shipment if it is something we do not enjoy? Can you adjust our shipping address with some ease?

Rate the benefits and their value to those of us not in the immediate area.

• For instance, we are more than 2,100 miles from Napa so we ask what benefits there are for those of us who are ‘geographically challenged’.

Rate the handling of shipping costs.

• Like it or not, the Amazon Effect, meaning everyone loves and almost expects free shipping, relates even to the wine industry.

Rate the website and the options offered there.

• Is your site user friendly and adapted fully for mobile use? If we continually run into the same glitches on a site year-on-year it isn’t a glitch, it’s a problem.

Rate, if we visited, did membership actually make a difference during our visit?

• We know you don’t know us from Adam, but since we made an appointment are we treated as one of the millions or one in a million?

Rate the communications we receive through the year from this winery.

• Are they clear, on point, informative, etc.? We file the best and recycle the rest.

Our final question is open ended and one of the most important.

Have there been any material changes in this winery during the past year?

• Does it have the same ownership, winemaker, sources, ag-leadership, focus, etc.?

Một hai ba, yo!