Uncorked Ventures Wine Club

Say Hello to the Washington Post Wine Club

UncorkedVentures — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:56:49 +0000

It might seem strange that we’d take the time to highlight another new wine club which sprung up, but realistically we don’t feel like these major media backed clubs (such as the New York Times Wine Club, Sunset Magazine’s Wine Club or even the Wall Street Journal Wine Club) are major competitors to us.

Sure, they’re bigger. Sure, their marketing budget’s dwarf ours.

They aren’t dealing in the same prices points, nor are they appealing to wine drinker’s who are looking for something unique.

Evidently, the Washington Post is now joining the wine club game. Welcome to the party guys, best of luck and we hope that whoever you chose to run your wine club for you (since none of the major media players have anything to do with choosing wine or interacting with customers) does an outstanding job!

Another 90 Point Wine

UncorkedVentures — Tue, 07 May 2013 17:18:03 +0000

We’ve mentioned before, but we’re incredibly happy to be considered the top 90 point wine club out there-every single bottle we ship is either rated at 90+ points by well known wine critics, or it is made in such small quantities that no scores are available-but the quality it there in our opinion.

We get a fair number of questions on that second part, about our opinion and how we decide. Sure, some people consider it a cop out on some level, but I thought I’d share a good example about why we want that leeway.

We shipped a bottle this month to our Special Selection Wine Club members called Stone the Crows. It’s a new Napa Valley project, but the wine is being made by Thomas Rivers Brown, perhaps the most famous winemaker on the planet. With multiple 100 point scores from Wine Advocate at multiple wineries, he is also the most sought after winemaker around as well. We shared some more information about Stone the Crows on our Blog if you’re interested-but when we started talking about including the wine there were not any critics scores to back up our thoughts, that it might be the most impressive bottle we’ve sourced all year.

Now, 92 points from Parker and 94 points from Wine Enthusiast came out and the wine is very quickly sold out. If we would have waited for the critics to catch up and publish, we wouldn’t have been able to share this memorable Cabernet Sauvignon with our customers.

By Mark Aselstine

It’s Been Too Long

UncorkedVentures — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 18:01:46 +0000

It seems too long since we’ve been here to write, but we’ve been busy.

Of late, we’ve been focusing on California wines for our three wine clubs. We’ve chosen to focus more and more on California wines over the past few months for a few simple reasons, we’re finding some great wine that is surprisingly available at reasonable prices.

I think the wine market has certainly improved over the past two years, but we’re still seeing quite a few wineries struggling to sell their wine priced at or above $50 per bottle. That means that there are some great 90+ point wines for sale, which are fitting in well in each of our three wine club tiers.

We’ll update our April wine club shipments here in the coming days since shipments should leave our warehouse early Friday morning.

By Mark Aselstine

1 Easy Question for Your Next Monthly Wine Club

UncorkedVentures — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 22:14:37 +0000

We saw a company offering a weekly wine club the other day, I guess getting out a monthly wine club wasn’t fun enough for them so they upped the ante right? A monthly wine club can be a shipping and logistical challenge, depending on your wine company. One of the major issues for us is that we tend to buy wine in the days and weeks before it is shipped. Now, if we had a major newspaper behind us things might be different-of course we’d then be stuck shipping inferior wine though!

In any case there is one simple question I wish everyone would ask their wine club before joining-what did you ship last month? It is a simple and straight forward question, but also one which should receive a simple answer. We don’t necessarily ship every single person in any of our wine clubs exactly the same wine (after all, if someone were to offer us a single case of the best value wine or simply the best wine that we’d ever tasted we wouldn’t turn it down) but we can definitely give you a good idea about what you should expect to receive as one of our wine club members.

By Mark Aselstine

How Does a Wine Club gift Work?

UncorkedVentures — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 20:17:19 +0000

We get the question on the phone quite often actually-how does it work when I give one of your wine clubs as a gift?

Unlike many online companies, we want to give you as professional of a setup as possible. Your gift message is custom printed on a sheet of paper and inserted into the box, to be found once it is opened. We don’t like the gift message appearing on a packing slip any more than you do!

Really though, when you give a wine club gift you have two separate options. First, you can prepay for a period of time. If you choose to prepay for your wine club gift membership then you’ll receive order notifications each and every month showing a $0 order. We won’t hassle you to extend your gift membership because as you might expect, we don’t like it when companies do that to us.

If you’re paying for a gift membership on an ongoing basis (monthly, every other month or quarterly) you’ll receive all billing information and correspondence. We don’t contact your gift receiver for credit card problems, cancellations etc. Again, we treat wine gift memberships with a simple rule-if we were customers of a wine club, how would we wish to be treated?

By Mark Aselstine

What’s An Average Day Owning a Wine Club?

UncorkedVentures — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 22:55:53 +0000

It’s a question we actually get on a fairly regular basis-what’s the average day that you experience owning a wine club?

I get it, people picture me driving around from vineyard to vineyard and drinking wine. Yeah, it’s like that a few days a month and that’s why we do the rest of it. Finding 90 point wines for reasonable prices (especially from wineries making under 2k cases per year) leads us pretty well off the beaten path. Instead of 5-6 appointments a day like most casual wine tourists, we tend to be able to fit in only 3.

Mostly, we work on the computer, or in our warehouse packing boxes. All the usual caveats of a small business definitely apply. Sometimes I am the shipping coordinator. Sometimes I am the lead customer service associate. Sometimes I am the marketing department. Sometimes I feel like someone who founded a business.

All that is to say simply thank you for your support. We greatly appreciate it and hope to continue to reward you with quality wines well into the future.

By Mark Aselstine

January Reserve Wine Club Shipment

UncorkedVentures — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:03:22 +0000

Matt & I had the following to say about our January Reserve Wine Club shipment:

We hope you enjoy this month’s Reserve Selections shipment. We were thrilled to feature one of the top 5 American Petite Sirah’s available as well as two wineries which we think, given time will become household names themselves. Clos Selene are Paso Robles wines in a Bordeaux or French style and Coastview takes a similar approach to red wine blends out of the Monterrey.

In a lot of ways, our Reserve Wine Club is special. While we consider all of our wine clubs to be 90 point wine clubs, we have a special responsibility when people are paying $65 or $100 per bottle for wine. It isn’t just about 90 point wine at this club level, but instead we have to continue to find not only great wine, but wine which isn’t widely available-even at fine wine stores. The Aratas Petite Sirah included in this month’s shipment was a great example. It was only 37 cases in total production, meaning that unless you’re somewhere close to Napa Valley, it simply isn’t going to be available.

By Mark Aselstine

January Special Selections Wine Club Selections

UncorkedVentures — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:42:14 +0000

Matt and I had the following to say on our Special Selections Wine Club newsletter:

We didn’t set out to send a Pinot Noir only shipment this month, but we felt strongly about the Chloe Creek Vineyard wine and the opportunity after over two years of trying, to work with Keefer Ranch on their vineyard designate estate Pinot was too good to pass up. We hope these wines combine to help show off the dramatic differences that winemaking choices and vineyard choices can create in Sonoma Pinot Noir.

When we tell friends, family and neighbors about what we do, we often get something of a confused look. As it turns out, people think that finding high quality wines is incredibly easy. It really isn’t and finding wine which we are comfortable shipping to our wine club members is a continual challenge. There is a ton of made to be sure, but frankly when you start getting into this $40+ price point-not all of it seems like a good value when you taste it. Sure, a $40 wine is more likely to be good than a $10 wine- but at this price point we need to start seeing an experience when you open a bottle. In this wine club shipment for our Special Selections wine club we thought both Pinot Noir choices offered something different and unique for Pinot Noir in California. They are both higher acidity Pinot Noir’s, which makes for a nice and interesting accompaniment to your favorite fish or chicken dish.

By Mark Aselstine

Wine Exploration Wine Club January Shipment Information

UncorkedVentures — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 17:54:29 +0000

Matt & I (the two owners of Uncorked Ventures) had the following to say about our January Wine Exploration Wine Club shipment: We hope you enjoy the dichotomy of the wine industry. Classic Napa at a fraction of the price point from Rustridge. An up and coming Paso Robles winemaker unwilling to be pigeonholed into a specific winemaking style, who happens to be willing to let us pick up wine at his house, or at least we was before he was featured as one of the 5 winemakers to watch in the San Francisco Chronicle last week. Cheers and enjoy from Mark and Matt at Uncorked Ventures.

So that super secret winemaker is Anthony Yount from Denner Vineyards (his day job) as well as Kinero (his personal label). We were originally drawn to Denner by something of a chance encounter. We were tasting at Barrel 27 and ended up talking to their two winemakers about where we should eat lunch-only to have their office manager/shipping coordinator/tasting room manager ask us where else we’d been on our trip. She not only suggested Denner, but had known Anthony for some time and was willing to give him a call and set up an appointment for us. It was a great introduction as his Kinero label is incredibly small (under 1k cases in total across 3-4 wines) and fits our Wine Exploration Wine Club price point nicely. At the time he was sourcing fruit from the famed James Berry Vineyard which happens to sit next door to Denner (it’s separated by a golf cart path, like that’s going to negatively affect quality) and his white wines are intense and interesting. In any case, we think he’s an up and coming name in the industry to be sure and we’re glad to be on board before everyone else.

By Mark Aselstine

January Wine Club Shipments Are Out

UncorkedVentures — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 19:01:43 +0000

Thank you for your continued patience-it’s been an interesting and challenging few months for us as we decide here at Uncorked Ventures about how to continue growing our wine clubs and in effect, our wider business.

We appreciate your patience and willingness to share this journey with us over the coming months. We were happy to feature a series of low production wines this month in our wine clubs, including a 40 case Petite Sirah in our Reserve Selections Wine Club made from the quickly becoming famous Hayne Clone.

We’ll share more information about each of these past shipments over the coming days and hope you’ll consider joining one of our wine clubs in the near future.

By Mark Aselstine