Wine has become my current drink of choice, I’m not an aficionado or anything but I’ve gotten to the point where I know what I like enough to order an entire case of the same thing and not regret it. I live no where near a winery and I feel like I’m wasting money buying bulk from the neighborhood liquor store.
Assume I’m looking for the best deals on a wide variety of common wines in the $10 per bottle price range and live in the Midwest. Are there noteworthy suppliers outside of just Amazon or the usual suspects?
I do occasionally but I’m in the UK where pretty much every wine club is a front for Laithwaites. They often have quite good plonk in the £7-8/bottle range.
Personally I like a mix of wines - I’ll look for mixed cases where I know and like eight or nine of the bottles, with the remaining three or four being unknown labels or types of wine I don’t usually drink. Thus I get to expand the range of wines I like without buying speculative ones in bulk.
Wines Til Sold Out is your friend. Granted, they don’t have an inventory that you can browse and choose a specific wine, but if you are able to get their emails and/or app and order within a reasonable amount of time, you can get some great deals on wines.
I order from them pretty frequently, and am very happy with the wine I get. I tend to buy highly-rated wines between $10-$15, and they have enough of those coming through that when my supplies get low, I just pay extra attention to their emails for a week or so and typically end up buying more than I planned on.
The only bad part about ordering wine (from anyone, not just WTSO) is that you have to be there to sign for it. If you don’t have a place to ship the wine where there’s a reasonable expectation that there will be an adult over 21 there to sign for it, getting wine shipped can be a hassle.
I went with the vineyard themselves for a case. It was a bit of a pain (everything around buying booze in PA is a pain) and as I recall I had to go pick it up at the FedEx place rather than get it at home. But it worked, the price was good, and shipping was less than I expected.
I belong to a wine club associated with a vineyard in Virginia, but we drive out once a quarter to pick up our shipment. It’s easier than making sure someone is home the day the booze arrives to sign for it (in DC you can’t leave a wine shipment without signature).
Have you asked if your local store will give a case discount? Almost every one I know of does - some also do half case discounts. My favorite local store does 20% off of a half case, which is awesome.
Hey, you sound like someone I know! We belong to a virginia winery also, and pick up our quarterly wine package at their tasting room. Would your winery be North Gate by any chance?
The point is you get better quality wines for the same price, because they aren’t putting a mark up on it. They are also run by wine nuts, so you get really interesting choices.
Unless you’re that picky or stuck on particular vintages or odd varietals, I’d look into getting it by the box.
Not all boxed wines are Franzia caliber these days; we’ve got some of Australian Sauvignon Blanc and Argentinian Malbec that, while not connoisseur grade, are very solid table wines. And by buying them in the box format, you get 2 benefits- lower cost, and better shelf life, since they’re packaged oxygen-free, and continue to be so until the box is gone. So you can drink a 3 liter box of wine in as long as it takes you, without any real degradation, unlike a bottle, which kind of has to be finished that night, or possibly the next day.