So you're thinking about joining a wine club

CONSUME enough media and you cannot help but stumble over an invitation to join a wine club. NPR wants you as a member. So do Turner Classic Movies and National Geographic. Eater promises "surprising and highly drinkable wines on your doorstep every month", if you join its club.

I still receive a daily home delivery of The New York Times. When I pick it up in the morning, I sometimes find an insert advertising The Wall Street Journal's WSJWine club. I've found this puzzling, since The Times has one of its own.

Hundreds of wine clubs operate in the United States. The most visible are those associated with illustrious brands that have little to do with wine, like these publications and media outlets.

Too often, these sorts of clubs offer mundane wine selections with little to attract curious consumers. They appeal more to people who enjoy associating themselves with these brands. Other types of clubs are far more focused on good, interesting wine. They cater to customers who not only want to enjoy wines regularly but are curious about how the wines were made and the people behind them.

The range of good wine clubs is vast. Are you a fan of a particular Oregon winery? Most American wine producers have clubs that offer regular shipments to fervent customers, often including small-production cuvées that are available only to members.

Many serious wine shops also offer clubs. Customers settle on a budget, and the shop will pick the wines. These selections can often be tailored to fit preferences for white or red or style. Customers can also set the frequency of shipments, like once a month, every two months or quarterly.

Some of the most interesting that I have found include Plonk Wine Club, offering an international selection focused on wines grown organically or biodynamically; Winestyr, which offers an excellent array of American producers, primarily from California; and Blackpoolmatt's Wine Club, founded last year by Matthew Gaughan, who holds a doctorate in English literature and emphasises wine education and music along with his fine, concise selection.

Then, there's Natural Action Wine Club, a nonprofit startup that combines a love of wine and art with a strong emphasis on racial justice. Members receive a rotating selection of four bottles quarterly, made by California winemakers who work naturally. Proceeds go toward efforts to diversify the wine industry through scholarships, internships and career support."We figured out things we could do, offering great wine experiences and raising awareness," said Khalil Kinsey, one of a team of eight behind the club, which took form after the racial justice protests last summer.

Who runs the club?

Anybody arguing the relative merits of the NPR, TCM, National Geographic and Wall Street Journal clubs might be surprised that they are all run by the same company, Laithwaites Direct Wines, an American affiliate of a British company. The Times club is administered by Lot18, which also manages the Williams Sonoma Wine Club and its own club, Tasting Room.

From a wine-lover's view, the problem with all these clubs is an almost complete lack of transparency about the wines. Several of the Laithwaites Direct Wines clubs, for example, offer a California zinfandel labelled Book of Shadows. You can even find that US$15 bottle in a few wine shops. But you will have difficulty determining who makes it, or where the grapes were grown.

The New York Times Wine Club offers Trilus, a US$15 bottle of California chardonnay. But searching online for Trilus will not yield a trove of details, or even vague hints about the wine. The only other places I could find that offered Trilus were the Williams Sonoma Wine Club and Tasting Room, both, like The Times club, administered by Lot18.

That's because most of the bottles offered by Lot18 and Laithwaites Direct Wines are proprietary labels. Nothing is necessarily wrong with these wines. They might be tasty and satisfying, and for some people that's enough. But they are untraceable, anathema for wine lovers and conscientious consumers who want to know where and how the grapes were grown, who farmed them, who made the wine and how.

Making a connection

The Eater club, which emphasises natural wines, is different. Each month's selection is themed, with traceable bottles selected by a different wine professional each month.

For me, this is a great dividing line in wine clubs. Can you trace the wine to a specific place and to an identifiable producer?

"Only real wineries," the Winestyr (pronounced WINE-ster) website promises, and it makes good, offering terrific West Coast producers such as Enfield, Tatomer, Lioco and Division among their selections. "At the end of the day, we want real wines, a real story, a real place and a connection to our members," said William Whelan, who manages the Winestyr portfolio. Winestyr, which began in 2012, looks like an online store. It operates a facility in Santa Rosa, California, where wines are stored, packed and shipped to 39 states, but the actual business of buying is between consumers and producers, who in effect sell direct to consumers through the Winestyr platform. The club serves about 3,000 members, said Robert Wilson, the chief executive, and is hoping to grow to 20,000 in two years.

Another dividing line marks how wine clubs decide which wines to send to consumers. Clubs like Winc and Bright Cellars offer a quiz, which they say they use to create personalised matches. Bright asks a series of questions like, "What is the one type of chocolate you could eat for the rest of your life?" Anytime a company has tried to discern my taste by algorithm it's failed miserably. I don't have high hopes for selection processes like these, although both Winc and Bright Cellars promise to replace any wines you don't like with free bottles.

"I hate algorithms," said Gaughan of Blackpoolmatt's Wine Club, which started in August. Gaughan, who lives in Petaluma, California, had planned to open a wine shop, but given the pandemic he decided to go online as a club instead. He is a wine educator and selects all the wines himself. He, too, offers a questionnaire to new members, not to frame their selections, but to get to know them as he wants to have a personal sense of his clients.

Plonk Wine Club started in 2010 as an online shop, said its founder, Etty Klein, a wine marketer and educator. A year later it added a club component, and when interest increased dramatically, she said, the club became the focus. Plonk emphasises unusual wines from around the world that she selects herself and sells to an adventurous clientele.

For people who are curious about wine, but have yet to dip their toes, wine clubs can remove some of the anxiety of wine selection. And especially for people who have felt marginalised or unwanted by wine culture, a club like Natural Action offers a welcoming invitation. "You really have to remove as many barriers as you can," Kinsey said, noting that those who are curious are often stopped by the idea that wine is an elite space for white people. "We are interested in sharing in an unconventional and informal way, removing the stigma of who can be in wine." NYTIMES