lgsjr – Page 41 – Power Tasting – The Wine Tasting Experience

The Back Streets of Siena

The city of Siena in Tuscany has a particular advantage for wine tasters. It is in a central location with Chianti to the North, Montalcino and Montepulciano to the east, Bolgheri to the west and Maremma to the south. Of course, it has the drawback of not being close to any of these famous winemaking areas, so visiting any of them entails a bit of a drive. But beyond access to vineyards, Siena is a special place to visit if you are going to go wine tasting in Tuscany.

The city has three great attractions that should not be missed: the Piazza del Campo and the Duomo or cathedral. The famous horse race, the Palio is run in the piazza, with the winner gaining local renown for the rest of his life. But it is very crowded and doesn’t give you the real sense of Siena.

We said three attractions; the third one is everything else. By all means, have yourself an apertivo in the piazza at sunset and admire the warm color of the campanile. Stand in awe of the richness of the cathedral, not only above you but at your feet. And then walk around the town.

A good starting point would be the Shrine of Santa Caterina (or Saint Catherine), Italy’s patron saint. This is the house she grew up in, today decorated by murals of her life and works. Even non-Catholics should be impressed. Then, when you walk out, turn left and then left again up the step-street called Costa Sant’Antonio. You’ll pass – or better yet, you won’t pass – a tiny restaurant called Osteria La Chiacchera – perched on the stairs. It is so steep that front legs of the tables are six inches longer than the back ones. At La Chiacchera they are dedicated to keeping the rustic cuisine of Tuscany alive, so you can have rabbit with olives or pork riblets and potatoes that you won’t find elsewhere.

If you turn left down an alleyway called the Vicolo Campaccio from the Costa Sant’Antonio, you’ll come to the Basilica San Domenico, which is the repository for relics of Santa Catarina. Frankly, we think it has much more to admire from the outside than in the interior. Now turn around and admire the view of Siena stretched before you. There’s a row of restaurants straight ahead, all pretty popular. Among them is Pomodorino, our favorite pizzeria in Siena (in fact, in all of Italy). We’ll leave the quality of the pizza to you, but it has unquestionably one of the best view of any pizzeria in the world. (Other opinions are welcome.)

The view from Pomodorino

Siena’s main drag is the Via di Citta, which runs behind the Piazza del Campo and can be reached from it up a little staircase to the Piazza del Campo. At that intersection is a gelateria called La Costarella that Steve liked better than any other in Tuscany. Then turn right onto the Via di Citta and you’ll come to the massive and forbidding but nonetheless inspiring Banca Monte dei Paschi. The recent financial crisis has not been kind to the bank, which is now endangered. It would be sad if it doesn’t make it because it has been there since the Renaissance. As pretty as it is by day, it is magnificent at night.

Banca Monte dei Paschi at night

The antiquity of Siena is evident in the fact that it is still a walled city, perhaps still awaiting another barbarian invasion. What amazes us is the countryside comes right up to the walls. More so than in our other travels, it gives us a sense of what it must have been like to live in a great medieval city. And as with so many Italian cities, there is art everywhere, on piazettas, on the sides of buildings, on any random street corner. The trick for the visitor is not to get jaded, to realize that ancestors from another age so loved their city that they adorned it everywhere.

A Sienese street by night

Because Siena, like many Tuscan towns, is built on a hilltop, many of the streets are very steep which by night makes them very romantic or a bit scary, depending on your mood. Either way, you know while you are there that you are amidst something very ancient and very rare.

A Field Guide to Servers – Part 5 – The Educators

We finish here Power Tasting’s Field Guide to Servers, our exclusive introduction to the fauna found in tasting rooms. We have saved the best of the species for last. You may read the entire series: the Pourers, the Hosts, the Sellers and the Retainers.

What is an Educator? An Educator is someone employed by a winery to explain to visitors what is being served, what aromas and tastes to pay attention to while sipping and generally how this wine fits into the winery’s past releases and its overall philosophy of winemaking. He or she may be working there to fill in the time until the release of his or her next book on oenology. An Educator not only knows wine but is excited by it and is eager to share his or her expertise with others. The hallmark of an Educator is his or her ability to gauge the level of knowledge and interest of the visitor and to adjust his or her discourse accordingly. You can expect an Educator to ask you some questions to figure out what you are interested in, not just what the winery wants you to hear…and buy, of course.

How can you recognize an Educator? Sadly, the Educator is the rarest form of the Server species, so when you encounter one you should be particularly attentive. There are young Educators but most have the maturity to have learned a great deal about wine. Telltale signs of the Educators is that that they listen first, then talk; they converse, not harangue; and while not opposed to selling you some wine, they realize that an educated consumer is their best customer. Particularly in wineries with a wide range of products – whites and reds, various varietals, different price points – an Educator will lead the visiting tasters where they want to go.

How to get the greatest advantage from an Educator? Listen. Ask questions. Learn. Think about what you’ve been told as you smell and taste the contents of your glass. Like a Host, the Educator wants you to enjoy your wine, but only an Educator wants you to gain an understanding of why you are enjoying your wine…or not, if that’s the case. Like a Retainer, he or she wants you to understand what makes the winery you are at unique. But he or she is not as impressed with the owner as with the vineyard manager and the winemaker who together craft a philosophy of wine that in the end winds up in your glass.

Where are Educators found? While in theory an Educator could be found anywhere, for the most part they inhabit the better wineries, the ones with high ratings in the magazines and high prices at the cash register. It isn’t only that those are the ones that can afford Educators. More important is that Educators have integrity and are uninterested in spending their days praising wines that don’t deserve praise. In some of those other wineries there may be people wearing little badges that say they are Wine Educators. At most, those have learned the descriptions written by their wineries’ PR departments. A true Educator not only knows about the wine he or she is serving, but can make comparisons with other vintages and other wines, not only from that producer or that region. When you encounter an Educator, treat him or her with respect.

A Field Guide to Servers – Part 4 – The Retainers

It is important that empowered wine tasters be familiar with the fauna to be found in tasting rooms across Wine Country. Thus we are publishing Power Tasting’s exclusive Field Guide to Servers. Here we have the next entry concerning the Retainers. Previous chapters have include the Pourers, the Hosts and the Sellers.

What is a Retainer? A Retainer works for a winery, but appears more like a personal employee of the owner, whom he or she treats with a deference that approaches worship. Think Downton Abbey. Before mentioning anything about the wine you’re about to sip, he or she will regale you with the lord’s, um the owner’s, wealth, travels, highly-placed connections, occupation prior/in addition to wine, parent’s background, hobbies and children’s occupations. Many of the owners are self-made zillionaires, often from the software business, so there may also be an explanation of the app-that-made-all-of-this-possible. Expect to be pointed to a photo of the smiling owner surrounded by adoring spouse and charming children.

How can you recognize a Retainer? It’s not hard. A Retainer will almost triumphantly make you aware of the Owner before you’ve even had a chance to taste the wine. He or she is but a humble representative of the beloved owner, always referred to as Mr. or Mrs., never by first names. Outside the US – oh yes, Retainers are found everywhere – landed titles are often stressed.

How to get the greatest advantage from a Retainer? Try very hard not to laugh. If at all possible, express interest in the owner and his or her fabulousness. Because there is a story behind the wine – there is always a story – listening and nodding may well lead to more and better wine, all to show the owner’s largess and interest in giving to the poor. (That would be you.) Oddly enough, many retainers know a good deal about their winery’s production, so you can learn about wine from a Retainer.

Where are Retainers found? For the most part, Retainers are found in the grand palaces erected to house tasting rooms around Wine Country. You might find them in more humble edifices if the owner has been an owner for a long time. Interestingly, there may be a great deal to learn from a Retainer about some of the truly great men (and some women, too) who built Wine Country in America or kept up its traditions in Europe. There is a much of value to learn and admire about a Mondavi or a Winiarski, a Rothschild or a Quintarelli, so these Retainers deserve more respect than those who are just pumping up the nouveau riche.

Hartford Family Winery

Hartford Family Winery (http://www.hartfordwines.com/) actually has two tasting rooms, one at the winery itself in the Russian River area and another on the plaza in the center of Healdsburg in Sonoma County. In keeping with the theme of this issue, we are reporting here on the in-town tasting room. It is on the corner next to the Healdsburg Hotel (specifically the Dry Creek Kitchen restaurant in the hotel) and catty-corner from the park. The interior is bright and sunny, with a bar area up front and large room in the back that would appear to be a graceful dining room in a country house. Except it’s not a dining room and you’re not in the country; you’re in a bustling town. Indoors or at their tables outside, all tastings are seated ones.

Here a server will bring you taste after taste from their list, which is actually a pretty concise one: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Zinfandel. 90% of their wines are from estate-grown grapes and while the winery is in Forrestville in the Russian River AVA, the vineyards are there, in Carneros, Sonoma Coast and other places as far afield as Oregon. So although they only deal in wine from three grapes, the choice of Hartford Family wines is actually quite a wide one.

(Just to confuse matters, many of the Hartford Family wines are marketed with the label of Hartford Court. For many years we thought they were two different wineries.)

We actually think the wines are very good, and we suppose we wouldn’t enjoy visiting Hartford Family so much if we didn’t think so. But to be honest, that’s not the reason we love this wine tasting experience. Taste indoors if you’d like, but the real joy of visiting Hartford Family is sitting at one of the tables that run along the pedestrian walkway between the tasting room and the hotel, facing the park. If it’s raining or very cold (which does happen occasionally), indoor tasting is your only option. But we were there recently on a sunny afternoon in February and found that a visit to Hartford Family’s Healdsburg location leads to the most relaxing wine tasting experience we have ever had.

There you are, looking up at the century-old trees in the town square, being served exquisite wines, not being rushed, people-watching the tourists and the locals alike. The thought that crossed our minds was simple: Life is good.

Since the service staff isn’t large and they need to keep going from table to table, there’s not a lot of time for questions and conversation with your servers. They seemed knowledgeable about their wines and were amazingly able to remember what wine came next for each table. But we found that the wine spoke for itself and that we were so busy not being busy at all that the time just passed away. Somehow we learned just about everything we wanted to know about the family, the winery and the wines.

The Healdsburg tasting room does take appointments for reserve tastings, but most of the visitors are walk-ins, tourists come to walk around a principal town in Sonoma’s Wine Country. If we were locals living in the Healdsburg area, we’d be there every weekend.

Healdsburg Then and Now

Healdsburg is the gateway to the Dry Creek Valley in Sonoma County and a backdoor into the Russian River area as well. We think it’s fair to say it’s Sonoma’s culinary capital and it’s quite full of tourists at all times of the year. These days it’s also the home of many in-town tasting rooms of some distinction.

There is some controversy over how to pronounce the town’s name. Is it HELDS-burg or HEELDS-burg? For a long time we said the former but now some locals tell us that the latter is correct.

We remember when the town, however you pronounce it, was a sleepy, almost dusty farmers’ village. The first time that we visited Healdsburg together, in 2000, there was only one restaurant open where we could find lunch served at tables, as opposed a sandwich shop with fare to eat in the park. If you went wine tasting in those days, it was a good idea to pack a picnic. For the most part, we avoided going into Healdsburg when we tasted wines in Sonoma County.

Then in 2006 the New York Times published an article entitled, “Healdsburg, Calif., Emerges as a Dining Destination” http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/travel/20choicesideweb.html . Was this the same place we knew? Indeed not; Healdsburg had grown, flowered and become a destination in itself. Of the restaurants mentioned in the article, Cyrus has decamped for Napa town, but Willi’s Seafood and Raw Bar is as good as ever and Charlie Palmer’s Dry Creek Kitchen is still sublime. Alas, Bistro Ralph and its heavenly short ribs is now a memory but it has been replaced by an Italian bistro, Scopa. Baci is another Italian choice down Healdsburg Avenue; Café Lucia serves nouveau Portuguese meals; and the Healdsburg Bar and Grill is there for a good, honest hamburger. And if you still want that picnic, you can buy your gourmet victuals at the Oakville Grocery or Shelton’s.

Although the aforementioned tasting rooms and restaurants are a more than adequate reason to visit Healdsburg, one of the great pleasures of the town is just walking around the plaza at the center of town. Okay, it’s touristy but it’s for a higher class of tourists, as snobbish as that may be. There are galleries, ice cream shops, a kitchenware store, a few hotels and some bakeries. No tee shirteries to be seen. In the center of all that is the plaza, a more than century-old park with towering trees and a bandstand in the middle. Often the square hosts markets, antique shows and summer concerts.

Photo courtesy of the City of Healdsburg

A not-so-subtle change has occurred in tasting wine in Healdsburg. There have been tasting rooms there for many years. But in honesty and with no disrespect intended, the wines were not very good. In the past few years, some excellent wineries have opened tasting rooms in town, including La Crema, Siduri, Clos Pegase, Stonestreet and Hartford Family. Each has its own personality, from relaxed to frenzied, but you can spend a day tasting great wine without driving between wineries.

There is a sort of cognitive dissonance about Healdsburg today. It is very much a part of Wine Country and the tourism trade that has grown up around wine tasting. But there is also more than a lingering memory of small-town America, especially in the plaza. Instead of a town to bypass on the way to the vineyards, Healdsburg is now worthy of a visit for itself.

In-Town Tasting

In most cases, the best way to go wine tasting is to drive out into the countryside; see the vines; snatch a grape or two if it’s harvest time; and get to know the area where the wine is produced. But there are times when this is not necessarily the best idea. In the Napa and Sonoma Valleys on a weekend (especially a holiday weekend); in Europe during the vendange, in remote areas where just getting from place to place takes up too much time it is often best to look for other alternatives. One of these is to do your tasting in a town, rather than in the vineyards.

It’s a bit unfair to the wineries that have opened in-town tasting rooms, but most of these have, for a long time, been pretty terrible. We are happy to report that this is no longer the case, at least not everywhere. There are reasons to stay in town, but there are also drawbacks.

Priest Ranch in Yountville, CA

Perhaps the greatest advantage of tasting in town is that you don’t have to drive from winery to winery. A very little shoe leather will take you from one to the next. On the other hand, unless you are staying in the same town, you do have to get back behind the wheel to go home. So the plus is you can taste more wine without driving but that’s the minus as well. Take it slow and easy in town just as you would out among the vines.

When you taste in towns, you trade off the beauty of the trees, sky, lanes and vines for the less ethereal attraction of cafes, shops and everyday life. In Santa Barbara, for example, the tasting rooms are in two main locations: along the railroad tracks in the aptly named Funk Zone and uptown in shopping centers. Neither of these are necessarily bad, but a lot of the artistry or wine is lost in an atmosphere that is either party time (!) or commercial.

You lose a connection with the terroir is towns. The wines are there because that’s where the owner opened the room, not because the wines come from right around that area. Again using Santa Barbara as an example, many of the wines you can taste are from Santa Barbara County, but many are from Santa Maria, San Luis Opisbo or even Sonoma Counties. There’s wine there, but no there’s no there there.

In Italy, in our experience, wineries don’t open tasting rooms in town. For one thing, the vineyards are just outside the towns, within a few minutes’ drive. For another, many of the towns are too small to attract visitors. They are little more than a few houses gathered around a crossroad. Exceptions include Montalcino and Montepulciano in Tuscany, where you find sale di degustazione that feature certain wineries that they represent. You pay a fee and you get a guided tour of the region, sitting on a bar stool. It always felt like a shame to us to be there when the real vineyards were just down the road.

A degustazione in Montalcino. Photo courtesy of Sempione News

Virtually every village in France’s wine growing regions has a cooperative, where the farmers who don’t have the money or interest to make wine for sale on their own band together for common facilities and marketing. If, as happened to us in Beaujolais during the last harvest, none of the wineries are open, the cooperatives are there to give you an idea of what the regions’ wines are like. In some, sadly, all you get is a distant hint of the greatness in that denomination, not the true glory of the AOC. There are some great exceptions, such as in Rasteau or Chablis.

At Walt Wines in Sonoma

There is hardly anything more pleasant than passing an afternoon taking in the scene in the street or on the piazza or the petit place sipping lovely wines. As with everything else having to do with adult beverages, that pleasure should be indulged with discretion. We like tasting in town sometimes, but we know where the real magic of Wine Country comes from, too, and it’s not on the streets.

A Field Guide to Servers – Part 3 – The Sellers

Here is the next installment of Power Tasting’s guide to the Servers one might deal with in Wine Country. There are many species of Servers; we have previously introduced Pourers and Hosts. Here we present the Sellers.

What is a Seller? A Seller pours and serves wine, but these are almost secondary characteristics. Like a Host, a Seller is a pretty good talker, but unlike a Host, the Seller’s intention is not that you have a great time but rather that you join the winery’s club or at least buy some wine while you are there. If you show the slightest interest – and we recommend that you do show interest – you will be regaled with details about the wine club, how easy it is to join, how much great wine you will receive and what wonderful events you will be invited to. It is best not to mention that you live far away and will probably not be able to attend the events. By showing some interest, you are more likely to taste wine from of a few bottles reserved under the counter for likely joiners.

How can you recognize a Seller? Sellers talk. And Talk. And talk. Some of the palaver is actually rather useful. Sellers generally know a lot about the wine they are serving (if not wine in general) and are happy to describe them to you, always in glowing terms of course. Once you respond, as polite people usually do, by saying that you too like a particular wine, the Seller will move in like a torpedo. A commonly encountered phrase is, “Well, if you liked that…”, and then he or she reaches along the counter and brings up the next inimitable gem. (By the way, none of this applies if you ask about a wine club first. Providing you with information you ask for is service, not a sales pitch.)

How to get the greatest advantage from a Seller? First of all, you need to have some sales resistance. If you don’t, either be prepared to walk away or to buy something. But encouraging the Seller brings rewards. You’ll get that extra little bit in your glass. The wonderful vintage from yesteryear might suddenly appear, left over from a media tasting and held in reserve just for you. You really will learn a lot about that winery’s production and wine philosophy. And, to be fair, you might actually find that the wine club or a few bottles being pushed at you do attract your taste buds and your pocketbook.

Where are Sellers found? Sellers can be found in virtually any tasting room, but a rule of thumb is that wineries with cheaper wines don’t benefit as much from club membership or a few bottles sold and the wineries with the highest priced wines don’t benefit from the Seller’s personality. But when you walk into a winery with a lot of bottles in the $75 to $100 range, the Seller’s distinctive spiel is likely to be heard.

Etude Wines

On a pleasant country road in Carneros, the southern end of Napa Valley, you’ll find the Etude winery. It is at the end of a long lane, in three buildings more evocative of New England than California. It is surrounded by vines although not for the grapes that go into the wines you will taste there.

Etude is unusual in that they make top-end Pinot Noirs, thanks to Jon Priest, their winemaker, but not only from Carneros. They produce Pinots from the Santa Rita Hills in Southern California, Willamette Valley in Oregon and as far away as New Zealand, all under the Etude label. They are all very good, but our favorites are their estate wines from Carneros, especially Heirloom, their premium vineyard parcel.

Etude is distinctive in another way, as well. They also make several highly rated Cabernet Sauvignons, all from the Napa Valley. Generally, Cabernet houses don’t do Burgundy grapes well and Pinot specialists can’t quite seem to get their Cabs right. Etude is one of the few to do both equally well. Oh, yes, they have Chardonnay and Pinot Gris too, for white wine drinkers.

The tasting room is spacious, woody, well-lit and has an imposing wall of wines behind the bar. There are tables and sitting areas inside and you can also have a seated tasting outside (for a charge). Or just take your glass, walk around the yard or sit in some strategically placed lawn chairs. We have found the servers to be rather knowledgeable and able to explain what is in your glass in such a way that you appreciate the wine a little more.

Photograph courtesy of justluxe.com

There is generally a convivial mood to tastings at Etude, fostered by the servers to be sure but also by the atmosphere of the winery. More so than at many of the Napa Valley wineries further north on route 29, there is more of a feeling that you are in the country, surrounded by vines, where the focus is on the quality of the wines than on the imposing architecture or Fifth Avenue merchandise for sale.

A plus (and maybe a slight negative) is that Etude is one of the first high-quality wineries one finds driving north from San Francisco. So if you don’t have a lot of time for a Napa Valley visit, Etude and a few of its neighbors can make for a fast and easy trip. The downside is that Etude is well-known both for its wines and as a destination, so a lot of groups arrive there. If you can avoid weekends, particularly holiday weekends, you’ll enjoy your visit to Etude all the more.

We have been members of Etude’s wine club for many years and are happy to introduce you to it. It’s the sort of place that, if we were going to design a winery, it would be a lot like Etude.

They Ship, You Sip

These days, it’s easy to find good, great and even exceptional wines in Wine Country. The problem is how do you get the wine you like onto your dining room table? If you live in the area of wineries you like, this really isn’t a problem at all. You simply buy some wine, load it into your car and drive home. But for those less fortunate and for those who like to include wine tasting in their travel plans, especially overseas, getting the wine home is tricky.

Wine clubs Wine clubs are one way to solve the dilemma. If you live in a state that allows out-of-state shipping (most of them, these days) joining a club means that wine will show up on your doorstep at regular intervals, usually four times a year. This is, after all, the raison d’etre of these clubs in the first place. It benefits the winery to be sure, but there’s a lot of benefit to the buyer as well, especially if you are a collector and are willing to let some of the wine age for a bit.

The problem – and this is a common theme – is the shipping cost. Almost all clubs offer you a discount (20% is common) but the cost of getting the wine to you often cuts, if not wipes out, the discount. Some wine clubs are becoming sensitive to this and are offering special deals and flat rate shipping, but this only benefits the individuals who buy in volume. For example, a $15 shipping charge for three bottles adds five dollars to the price of every bottle. That’s cost is not unusual.

Shipping services The wine clubs are great if you want a case a year from one producer. But if you are on a wine tasting trip, you are more likely to buy one bottle from each of twelve wineries than twelve bottle from just one. Here’s where shipping services come into play. Of course, there are UPS and FedEx and they are usually present in the towns of Wine Country. But check first; not every common carrier has a license to ship alcohol and those that do don’t have it in every office.

Another alternative is specialized shippers whose primary business is to send wine home to people just like you. They specialize in packing and shipping delicate freight, i.e., wine bottles. A few that we have used are Fitch Mountain in Healdsburg, Buffalo’s Shipping Post in Napa and Safe Haven Wine Services in Paso Robles. A quick Google search will help you find more shippers wherever you may be going.

A variant on these services is to let your hotel take care of it for you. Many have arrangements with shipping services that allow you to bring your bottles to the front desk, fill out some inventory forms and they take care of the rest. It’s very convenient and we’ve never had any troubles using the service from hotels we have stayed in. But it is a bit nerve-wracking to leave your precious cargo in the hands of a hotel clerk.

The process of these services runs around $60 per case. In other words, you’re back to adding five bucks to each bottle. If you are proud of a fabulous little low-priced gem you found somewhere, an additional $5 takes away much of the bargain.

Lug it yourself There is the option of carrying your wine home yourself. The economics make sense. Almost any winery will sell you a foam insulated box for under $10. So fill it yourself and take it with you. It may cost you another $25 to include the box with your luggage, so you might be saving $25 in total. And, oh yes, remember to bring packing tape and scissors with you.

That may be good for your wallet but it’s bad for your back. You have to get the wine into the back seat of your car (in summer at any rate; in winter it can go in the trunk), out of the car and into the terminal and then reverse the process on the other end when you land. If your car is a rental, there’s one additional step. Don’t even think about sending wine as luggage if you have a stop on your itinerary.

You are also subject to the tender mercies of two sets of baggage handlers. For the most part, bottles we have taken home this way have arrived intact, but there have been some sad counter-examples. When we travel to Europe, we generally limit our purchases to the legal limit (four bottles per couple), wrap the bottles in bubble wrap that we have brought from home and put them in our luggage. We have had no horror stories thus far, but time will tell.

Joining a Wine Club

In almost all California wineries, when you go wine tasting you’ll find a brochure (or your server will give you one) inviting you to join their wine club. At that very moment, it usually seems like a great idea. The few sips you’ve had so far appeal to you; the room is warm; the server is friendly; and the wine is beginning to lighten your mood. So why not?

There are some very good reasons to join a wine club and about as many that would lead you to decide not to. Being a member certainly makes a difference to your wine tasting experience, as we have written previously. So let’s give some thought as to how you might decide whether to join.

The first question you should ask yourself is whether you like the wine. Even more, do you like it enough to want to receive a case every year? If the answer is “yes”, by all means join the club. But if not, think twice. That’s because by joining you are signing up for at least a case annually. A slightly more nuanced question is whether you like all of a winery’s production, or just certain (usually the top tier) wines? If you would welcome getting some but not all of their wines, you should follow up with some more questions.

Can you select just the wines you want? Or as we call it, can you customize? Many clubs will offer you just the whites or the reds or the sparklings or however they split up their production. So if, for example, you like all their red wines but aren’t eager to get their whites, limit your deliveries accordingly.
But what if you only like some of their reds? Again, some wine clubs will allow you to specify certain varietals. For another example, we are members of a few wine clubs in the Carneros region from which we only receive Pinot Noirs .
But what if you only like one or two of their wines? That’s a bit tougher and many wineries won’t let you choose only one or a few. But some do, and then you’ll get a dozen bottle of the same wine year after year. Do you really like it that much?

For the most part, wineries select certain wines for you for each shipment and that’s what you get. You may not even be allowed to cancel an order you don’t want. Some, however, will allow you to change their selections to your preferred wines. This is another way of limiting what you get to what you like.

Another reason for you to join a wine club is to have the opportunity for free tastings whenever you visit. So before joining a club, ask yourself whether you like the experience in a particular winery enough to come back. Or put another way, would you like to come this way again repeatedly? If you don’t see yourself in that part of Wine Country very often in the future, maybe it’s a good idea to pass on this club.

For some people, a consideration is how often a wine club delivers. One of our clubs send two bottles every two months. That’s six time a year waiting at home for UPS, which can be a drag. The ones we appreciate most have two annual shipments; the norm is four. They usually arrive in spring and fall, since shipping can be tricky in deep winter and wines don’t like cross-country transportation at the height of the summer.

We travel to California for wine tasting every year, so we have certain places where we like the wines a lot, find the tasting rooms and their outdoor areas very inviting and the servers to be congenial and welcoming. So membership makes sense for us.

At a certain point, you may find your wine rack overloading with wines from one or more of your clubs. Maybe the wines appealed more to you on vacation than when you started drinking them at home. Maybe the food you make in your own kitchen isn’t very compatible with the wines you loved so much on that visit two years ago. Maybe enough is just enough. Then quit the club! It’s not a lifetime commitment and you can always join a different wine club and fill out your cellar.