I love trying new wine clubs, so I was excited to receive a shipment from Clubs of America to review for our readers. Clubs of America is known for having a wide variety of different monthly clubs to choose from (pizza, beer, flowers, chocolate, wine, cigars, and coffee). You can mix and match the different clubs, which makes a fun gift idea. The focus of my review is on the wine club specifically. Read more below and be sure to check out the video that shows everything from the boxing to the newsletter.
What Does the Club Include?
The Clubs of America Wine of the Month Club includes 2 bottles a month. You can choose 2 red, 2 white, or 1 of each. I almost always choose 1 of each because I like the variety and my friends are a mix of red wine and white wine drinkers. If you are giving it as a gift and do not know the type of wine that your recipient likes, the choice of 1 red and 1 white is a safe bet.
Wine is shipped monthly, every other month, or every third month (quarterly). The rate is $42.95 including shipping no matter how often you have it sent, except that you can currently save $25 if you order a 12-month membership. It's important to note that shipping is included because this is not the case with all other clubs. When you add shipping on to the clubs on some of the other sites, you will find that this price is pretty comparable to standard monthly clubs.
What about the quality of the wine? Comparing the reviews of the bottles that I received across multiple wine review sites, the wine is of medium quality–that which you would likely break open for a normal dinner or dinner party, take as a hostess gift, or give as a general gift. The wines come from all over the world and the site says that they are produced by “small regional wineries,” which means that you will likely not know most of the names without looking them up online.
What about the price of the wine? I priced out the bottles that I received in my shipment online and they were around $34 together. Adding the shipping onto that plus the newsletter makes the club a decent value. In addition, the price of the wine definitely fit the quality. The price point is particularly good if you are giving it as a gift.
Giving the Club as a Gift
One of the things that I really liked about giving the club as a gift was that you could print off or email a gift letter from their site that includes standard information about the club as well as a personalization option. This is particularly great for last-minute gifts! Buy the club, print the letter, and throw it in an envelope.
Although the shipment does not come with any type of special packaging or free gifts, it does include the Wine Expeditions monthly newsletter, which explains the wines. I find that this is particularly nice when giving wine as a gift because it adds something to the gift beyond just giving someone a bottle of wine that they might now know anything about or how to pair.
One of the best things about giving Clubs of America as a gift is that they focus on gifts. While their site does not talk much about how wines are chosen (beyond using “Global Wine Club sommeliers”), their focus on gift giving and the ability to mix and match with their other clubs is different than almost all of the other wine clubs.
Lastly and most importantly when it comes to sending gifts, they ship to almost every state! As you can tell by our Ship to States pages, there are a number of states it is hard to ship wine to. Clubs of America ships to every state except for Hawaii, Alaska, and Utah.
My Recommendation
All in all, I enjoyed my shipment of wine from Clubs of America. It is not one of the fanciest clubs and has a little less emphasis on the production of the wine as some of the other wine clubs, but it is a quality wine club for the price. It would make a good gift, especially if you want to take advantage of the other clubs that they also offer.
Read my basic Clubs of America Wine of the Month Club review or watch the video for more information and then visit Clubs of America to find out how you can order.
