Do you have a wine enthusiast on your holiday gift list? Need an easy, fun idea? How about a wine club subscription! Now, buyer beware, wine clubs are everywhere these days. Food and Wine Magazine, Wall Street Journal (a sure source of wine information??????), everyone has a wine club. Unfortunately, most of them are peddling wines that don’t exist in the retail market. They look legitimate, but they are custom labeled bulk wines and made out to be more than they really are.
Your wine enthusiast gift recipient will want unique wines, made and sold by real wineries. Enter the Plonk Wine Club, the brainchild of Etty Lewensztain. Originally a web-based wine shop in LA, Plonk attained some notoriety in the wine media with their unique offering. The concept sounded good: interesting wines strictly under $30. Today, Etty has morphed her shop into a wine club, still featuring great value wines from all over the world. In addition, the wines are from family owned wineries and feature organic or biodynamic farming practices.
Something Old Something New
My sample shipment included a Matetic Sauvignon Blanc from Chile and a Macchialupa Falanghina from Italy. I was familiar with those two wines. Then there was a Santomas Refosk from Slovenia which was new for me, and a LusentiGuttornia from Emilia-Romagna. I’ve had numerous wines from Emilia Romagna, but I’ve never heard of Guttornio! After checking each website, I can report these are indeed, real wineries owned by real families and are being farmed organically or biodynamically.
More Than A Bottle of Wine
Each shipment comes with a card for each wine describing where it’s from, what to expect from the wine and some suggested pairings. This is really useful, as the wines may not be familiar. A nice additional touch: go to the website for links to the recipes for all the dishes!
Choices, Choices
Interested? There are several options for clubs. My sample was from the Mixed Wine Club. There’s also a Red-Only club, a White-only Club, and a couple of clubs aimed at Cabernet lovers, Pinot Noir lovers and Sauvignon Blanc lovers. You can specify 2, 4 or 12 bottles per month. Pricing as of this writing runs around $50 for 2 bottle shipments and $90 for 4 bottle shipments. You know, you can always give yourself a gift….
Finally, if you’re considering signing up for a wine club, Madeline at Wine Folly recently put together a complete wine club guide – and the Plonk Wine Club made her recommended list.