Expand your palate with these wine clubs that drop high-quality bottles right at your doorstep. A compulsory part of fancying oneself as a wine connoisseur—an oenophile, if you will—is having a deep appreciation of the discovery of new regions and textures, aromas, tannins, and top notes. What isn’t necessary: the stale stereotype that you need to know everything about wine to participate.

Whether you’re a certified sommelier or exclusively capable of distinguishing between a red wine and a white, a wine subscription service is an excellent option for anyone interested in expanding their palate and embracing the educational, surprise-and-delight nature of wine. There’s also the glory of doing so from the comfort of your own kitchen—and always having your mini fridge well-stocked when friends or family stop by.

A wine club “is the curation of selections offered to you,” says Scott Carney, master sommelier and dean of wine studies at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE). “I presume a happy member of such a club will appreciate the ‘story-telling’ about the wines offered and the incremental bump in quality that the selections offer through their curation,” he adds. According to Carney, the best wine clubs offer consumers options that fit within their flavor and/or varietal preferences, yet expand upon prior experience. Are any wine subscriptions worth it? You bet. But not all are worthy of your long-term commitment. Ahead, the five best wine club options for every shade of oenophile.

• For the curious, quality-conscious wine consumer: Plonk

To find the best wine subscription services, we ordered eight popular options and had them delivered to our door. We evaluated each one based not only on the quality, condition, and variety of wines in the box, but also on factors like flexibility (including pricing tiers, commitment levels, and personalization options), shipping or membership fees, and how each shipment is curated.

As Carney reminds us, expert curation by a certified professional is what separates a truly worthwhile wine club from one that falls flat.

If you’ve sampled your fair share of full-bodied Bordeaux and crisp sauvignon blancs and feel ready to let your taste buds taste new terroirs, a Plonk membership is a smart starting place. This service focuses exclusively on natural wines that are grown using organic, biodynamic vineyard practices. (Meaning no pesticides, herbicides, or commercial additives such as colorants, acidifiers, artificial sugars, alcohol enhancements, or industrial chemicals get used in the bottles they source.) Every vintage is hand-selected by the brand’s founder and sole curator, Etty Klein, who holds certifications from the Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) and the American Sommelier Association.

What we love: In addition to solely supplying natural wines grown using sustainable farming methods, Plonk includes both old and new world wines in each shipment—think classic regions including Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and California as well as lesser-known wine regions such as Croatia, Austria, Uruguay, and Slovenia. And even within the most popular regions, you won’t find any vintages you’ve tried at a large commercial wine retailer.

“The idea is to expand our customers' wine horizons, encourage them to take a leap of faith, and thus expose them to new favorites,” says Klein. “Customers who began thinking that they only want to drink Cabernet Sauvignon or Sancerre are ordering bottles of Austrian Blaufrankisch, Hungarian Furmint, and German Muller Thurgau in droves.” And after tasting what Plonk had to offer, I can absolutely attest to such an experience. My box included a 2023 Greek Kir-Yianni peach-and-pear-scented assyrtiko, Castello Romitorio’s 2023 Brio Toscana (a rustic red that spins sangiovese into silk), a 2021 Pence California red blend filled with sour cherry flavor, and my absolute favorite: Union Sacré’s 2023 unfiltered orange, made from a blend of Gewürztraminer, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, and Sylvaner grown on the central coast of California. In complete transparency, I thought I hated orange wine until I tried this one. Finally understanding the flavor potential of skin-contact was a treat, as was finding four totally unique wines I’d never known or heard of prior. Bottom line? Rest assured that your Plonk-ified palate is going to experience something new.

Plonk has three club options—red, white, or a mix of the two—and subscriptions can recur every month, bimonthly, or quarterly. Those who prefer custom cases can mix and match wines a la carte online, which means you can re-buy bottles you loved from a prior shipment. Shipping is free on all orders, there’s no membership fee, and a $10 discount is offered to all first-time customers.

What we’d leave: If you’re one to order the same styles of wine on repeat (no shade), Plonk’s off-the-beaten-path selection of different wines will probably taste very new. You can either embrace the element of education (and the rare grapes and unusual aromas that come with it), or opt for a wine club that’s more suited to whatever your palate’s used to sipping.