You’ve reached the point where you’ve outgrown the wine selection at the grocery store. You’ve found a few favorite wines at restaurants and searched the shelves at the local wine merchant. You may even have visited a winery or two. This may have led you to the internet and the sites of some of your favorite wine producers. You’ve looked at the information on wine clubs and wonder if it is something you should be interested in.

Many wineries offer memberships in wine clubs. In a typical arrangement the winery sends its members four shipments of three bottles or six shipments of two bottles spaced out over the year which works out to a case a year. As an inducement, members are offered a discount and may be offered access to limited production or special bottlings. You can usually order additional wine at the member discount. A nice newletter with news about the latest wines and recipes, is often included as well as invitation to special events. Also included as priviledges are private tours and free tastings.

It certainly sounds attractive. You get a certain insider status. You get some wine. You even get the fun of opening a package with wine inside. It’s like Christmas four or six times a year. Who wouldn’t like that. The question is, “Do wine clubs deliver?”

The answer, of course, is, “It depends.”

The first point, is that you do get the wine. Our household belongs to the wine clubs of four wineries in the Napa and Sonoma area. We have never had any problems with not getting wine or having the wine damaged in shipment. I have to assume that any reputable winery will honor their end of the bargain. In any case, your credit card is not charged until the wine is shipped. The wine industry has developed some pretty effective shipping containers to minimize problems and UPS seems to do a pretty good job of handling the packages.

Are the wines good? They are as good as the winery. I wouldn’t pick a winery without first trying some of their wines. But if you’ve had the wine before and like it, you should be getting wines that you will enjoy. Note, that I am talking about the wine clubs of specific wineries and not wine clubs that offer to make selections from a variety of wineries. I have no experience with any of those.

Will you like the selections? Most of the wine clubs will select a variety of wines from across their product lines. This may mean that one shipment will be include a Cab and a Merlot and the next a Chardonnay and a Pinot Noir. The winery is of course trying to interest you in the entire range of wines they make. This can certainly be a plus as it gives you an excuse to try something new. However, if you only drink reds, getting a bunch of whites may not thrill you. Fortunately, many of the clubs let you select only reds, only whites, or a mixture. One club that I belong to, Matanzas Creek, lets you customize each shipment so that you can pick which wines you will receive. That’s a particularly nice touch, but one that is not offered by many wine clubs.

Will you get rare or special wines that are not available to the general public? That will depend on the winery, but in general I’d say the answer is yes, at least to a certain extent. Of the four clubs I am a member of, all make available some fairly low production wines. One of them, Ridge’s Advanced Tasting Program, routinely offers single vinyard Zinfandels with production of under 50 barrels, that are available only through the club or at the winery. All of the clubs offer at least some wines that have low production volumes and limited availability, though the percentage that these wines make up of the total shipped does vary.

Are these wines worth it? That’s a very subjective question. Ridge, for instance makes Zinfandels in fairly large volume where they blend the wines from a number of different vineyards, which are the wines you find in the store. Their ATP program is made up of wines produced from single vineyards or even just a particular block in a vineyard. I wouldn’t say these wines are better than the blended wines, but they are interesting and you can detect differences between them. Some of the wines are definitely experiments or use grapes grown for blending purposes. As an example, Pine Ridge grows a small amount of Cabernet Franc for blending with the Cabernet Sauvignon. They also bottle the Cabernet Franc by itself as a wine club offering. I happen to like Cabernet Franc, so I have no problem with this practice. Pine Ridge, also ships once a year, a bottle of their very expensive, low volume, Cabernet Sauvignon. This is definitely worth it, and something that would be impossible to find locally. It’s also pushing the boundaries of what I’d normally pay for a bottle of wine, but heck, it’s only once a year.

From the stand point of the wines, wine clubs certainly deliver what they promise. There are, however, a downside, or at least some points to consider.

The first is expense. Of the four wine clubs I belong to, the typical wine price for a two bottle shippment is around $50-60 and a three bottle shipment is about $90. This occurs four or six times a year. You can find wine clubs that are cheaper, and you can certainly find clubs for more. Most clubs require you to sign up for a minimum of one year, but let you cancel any time after that. None of them, that I know of, charge an up front fee for joining.

While all of the clubs offer a discount, typically 15%-20%, they do tack on shipping and handling as well as tax. The shipping and handling will be between $5-$10 a bottle, though this becomes a little better with larger shipments. So unless you join a club where the average bottle price is greater than $50, you may not be saving much. Also, the price before discount is what you would pay in a liquor store and not the price at say, Woodman’s. I wouldn’t join a wine club planning to save money.

The second issue is that UPS and other carriers will only deliver the wine where they can get the signature of someone over 21. If an adult is home most of the time or you can ship the wine to your place of business, this isn’t a problem, but if not, it may be a concern.

A third point is that wine is susceptible to extremes of temperature. The wineries and shipping agents do try to avoid shipping when weather is bad or or might be warehoused over a weekend, and usually the wine is in transit for two or three days. I’ve never had a problem, but it is something to be aware of.

What about all the special benefits? Well, all the special events and members only tastings are a nice touch, but the reality is, I live in Wisconsin, the wineries are in Northern California. I just can’t take much advantage of them. I do, however, try to get to the wine country every few years, so it’s not a total waste. In general, though, the benefits are largely irrelevant.

Can you just avoid all these issues and buy the wine at a local wine shop? Some of the club wines I get I can certainly find locally. Others, I’ve never seen anywhere. This varies greatly from club to club. During a recent visit to Woodman’s, I saw most though not all of the wines that we’ve gotten from Seghesio. I’ve never seen any of the wines in Ridges Advanced Tasting Program. The other wineries fall somewhere in between. The higher end and lower production wines will be much harder to find locally.

So, should you join a wine club? If you are just looking to save some money, no. But if you are looking to broaden your horizons or have the occaisional special bottle, then they are worth considering.

It’s that time of year when anyone who writes about wine feels obligated to make recommendations for wines to serve at Thanksgiving. In keeping with that tradition, here are mine.

My significant other and I have fantasies about the perfect Thanksgiving, an elegant meal with a small group of gourmet friends featuring a number of elegant courses accented by fine wine paired perfectly with each dish. The realitiy is that we host a family gathering of eighteen (or is it twenty?) people ranging in age from roughly one to seventy. The dinner is traditional turkey (26 pounds), mashed potatoes (15 pounds), various vegetables served with cheese sauce (too many pounds to count), and of course that jellied cranberry sauce that only one or two people eat. We’re lucky that by adding two tables end to end with the dining room table and using every chair in the house we can actually get the crowd all seated, if only momentarily. Only about half of the adults are wine drinkers with the rest drinking milk, soda and beer.

With that in mind, we avoid anything over $15, try to keep it simple, and have enough on hand so that there is a glass left to drink while cleaning up after the crowd has gone. Here then is what we probably will be drinking this Thanksgiving.

For a white, we’ve been drinking the Hogue Gewurtztraminer ($9). I am not a big fan of Chardonnay, especially at the low end, and don’t find it a good match for food. The Hogue has a nice balance of crispness and fruitiness without being too sweet. Just the thing to go with turkey and mashed potatoes. If you prefer your whites a little sweeter, Hogue also makes a Late Harvest Riesling in the same price range that should suit you. Both of these wines are readily available.

The subject of the perfect red wine for Thanksgiving always causes debate, and from any group of three wine experts you can expect at least four opinions. In the past, I’ve usually chosen either a Zinfandel or a Syrah. Syrah is a very food friendly wine and Zinfandel has enough fruitiness to avoid overpowering the turkey.

This year I think we will go with the Cline Ancient Vine Zinfandel ($12-$14). This is a nice Zin with a bit more depth to it than Zin’s a few dollars less. There are certainly a number of Zin’s in this price range that would also be good choices, the Ravenswood Vintner’s Blend ($10) and the Renwood Sierra Foothils ($12) come to mind.

If I was going to go with a Syrah, I’d be tempted to choose the Qupe Central Coast ($16) though it is just over the $15 mark. I’ve been a fan of this wine for years. It is elegant, smooth, and extremely food friendly, everything one looks for in a good Syrah. There are of course any number of Australian Syrah’s (Shiraz), but this is after all, an American holiday.