Winc.com Wine Review

Two years ago we moved to a new house in a very active social community. We were going to dinner parties at least once a month and my wife would usually bring a small dish and I would bring wine. This has been a lot of fun for everyone but I always hated running out to the store to get one or two bottles of wine. My new gig keeps me very busy and on the road, so the last thing I want to do run around looking for a good wine. So, I decided to join a monthly wine club.

Enter Winc.com

I don’t remember how I found Winc.com but I ended up enrolling in their monthly delivery subscription, essentially a Winc Wine Club of the month! They have this deal that if you order 3 bottles of wine per month, you get free shipping, so I opted for a 3 bottle per month delivery. This works out really well as my wife and I drink about a bottle of wine per month, we take one bottle to share at the dinner parties, and I keep one in reserve. Over time, I’ve built up a decent stock of wine that I can use to give away as a gift or keep for the holidays. I always joke that wine and champagne is the REAL social security.

Rated Wines

One of the nice things I like about Winc is it’s rating system and pairing guide. So far, this has NOT steered me wrong. I tend to switch to more white and rose wines in the summer and last year we discoved a fantastic Portoguese white wine from Winc’s monthly recommendations. I find the descriptions of the wines to be spot on and over time I’ve built up a list of wines that I know work with my cooking style.

I did this via trial and error but I suggest you start with the ‘Discover’ option on their website. This goes into the history of the site, why they started Winc and how they run it.

Note: If you’re a single person or couple that likes to entertain, Winc’s wine guides and recommendations are a life saver!

Wine Pairing

One of the great things that Winc does is give you suggestions on how to pair wine with. I’m a big fan of the Slow Food movement and really feel that anyone can make good healthy food and pair it with a good and reasonably price wine. Once you make your monthly wine selections, Winc then generates suggestions on how to pair the wine and with a food recipe.

For example, I recently bought 4 wines and one of them was a White Blend from California. The rule of thumb is to pair white wines with fish and in this case, Winc suggested a Whisky-Cured Salmon dish.

Boy, does that sound good and I’m going to give that a try this weekend once my wine arrives!

Wine on Autopilot

Once you been a member with Winc and you actively rate the wines you tried, it starts to learn your pattern and tastes. This is it’s secret power, machine learning and AI. It learns from what it’s customers like and then finds wines to make their tastes. This is why it’s so disruptive IMHO. Winc has gone so far as to start sourcing it’s own wines from growers based on it’s customer’s tastes.

Caveats

Like all great things there’s always a snag. Once you’re enrolled you’ll get a monthly shipment of wine UNLESS you request to skip a month. Occasionally I forget that I’m in the club and then a bottle shows up on my doorstep. If you ever want to cancel, then you have to call them. There’s no easy introverted way to cancel this, you have to speak to someone over the phone.

Get $22 of Wine Free

Since I’ve been a member for a long time and Winc has given me a deal to share with you all. Using this referral code, you’ll get $22 USD worth of wine if you enroll into the subscription. You can use those $22 to spend on whatever wine you want. When your first wine box arrives, I’ll get free bottle. If you stick with the program and get your second box the following month, I get one more free bottle of wine. That’s it! We both get some free stuff!

Investing in Winc

I love how they’re disrupting the wine industry and they seem to be doing financially very well. I even went one step further and invested in them by picking up 1000 shares at $1.41 during their initial offer. I’m not suggesting you do the same but if you are interseted, they’re doing another offer for $1.75. My initial investment had a nice rate of return (~ +25%) in just under a year.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you do the same. All the standard investment disclaimers apply here, like do your own research and so on, but for a minimum $1000 buy in, it’s not too bad.