Posted on February 15, 2007 by Sonadora
Matt cancelled two more wine clubs last night. Which leaves us with six still going strong. However, I have spoken with most of them and reduced our shipments to only once or twice a year, which makes the shipping infinitely more affordable and reasonable for us. So that puts us at an average of $150 a month over 12 months for shipments of wine. Much better than the $400 we had been averaging for the last 6 months! It’s only going to be about 68 bottles of wine a year now, instead of closer to 140. Not to mention what I had been spending on everyday wine from various wine shops around here. Ah, the cost of being a wine lover. Where’s that winning lottery ticket when I need it? Or perhaps the job that’s willing to pay me to drink wine? Or just pay me a lot more money than a government minion makes! Hmm, what should I drink in the meantime? We’re working our way through our stash at a fairly alarming rate.
Filed under: Clubs | Comments Off on Then there were 6
Posted on January 17, 2007 by Sonadora
Upon perusing our credit card statement, it came to Matt’s attention that we spend a good chunk of our income on wine. Since we are planning to buy a house, we really need to get our spending in check. The bulk of what we spend on wine comes through our club shipments. And while I love all of them for different reasons, even I will admit that shipping wine across the United States direct to my door is not very cost effective. Most of the wines themselves are priced reasonably enough, it’s the shipping costs that are killing the cost effectiveness. When a $50 shipment of wine costs $84 because of shipping, we’ve got an issue. Additionally, we went a little nuts when we discovered the idea of wine clubs and got in over our heads. I think the best solution is for us to keep the ones we love the most and stock up by reordering the club shipment wines if we like them at a discount and with the splitting the shipping cost option that some often offer (Matt said I need to cut immediately). In alphabetical order, here are our clubs:
Alderbrook
Bella
De la Montanya
Ferrari-Carano
Fritz
Hanna
Hop Kiln
Marimar
Mauritson
Nelson Family
Quivira
Roshambo
If we kept them all, we end up with around 127 bottles shipped to our house per year with approximately 42 shipments. And really, it’s the shipping costs that are killing us. Each shipment has an average of around $30 in shipping costs. So we’re talking around $1300 a year just in shipping costs. $1300 is a lot of wine that we could buy. Some of these are going to be easier to cut than others because I can find some of them in the stores here (not many though) which I didn’t realize when we joined since I didn’t move to this area until after we came home from California. I need to pick between 4-6 to cut. Anyone have any suggestions, if you are at all familiar with any of these? Or in other words, make my decision easier!
Filed under: Clubs, Misc, Wine | 8 Comments »
Posted on December 16, 2006 by Sonadora
We found Quivira while we were out driving on our honeymoon. I was driving since I could get a better rate on the rental car and Matt was navigating. He insisted that we were driving to nowhere, there were no vineyards on that far out on the road we were on. I persisted and we came upon Quivira. (I love being right.) It was a slow day at the vineyard, on what I believe was a Wednesday. We had plenty of time to chat with the tasting room server and learn about Quivira’s wines and history. We enjoyed the wines so much that we signed up for the club and have been very pleased with the wines we’ve received.
Last night we grabbed a glass of the 2003 Syrah before heading out to dinner. Again, I really wish I remembered to decant more often. I really think this wine would have benefitted from decanting for a bit. On that first glass, the flavors were really tight and difficult for me to pick out, but I got a strong sense of roasted meat and pepper. After dinner we had the second glass and the wine had aired (albeit in the bottle) for the hour or so that we were gone. This is a very earthy wine. A little bit of oak and big earthy flavors. I got a bit of dark fruit, plums, black cherries, currants, as the wine opened up some more.
Filed under: Clubs, Quivira, Red, Syrah, Vineyards | Comments Off on 2003 Quivira Syrah
Posted on November 17, 2006 by Sonadora
I got the best kind of surprise in the mail today. Unexpected wine!! We signed up for the De La Montanya mailing list while in the Sonoma area. Sadly, at the time, the wine club was completely full, as it is limited to 1,000 members due to the fact that De La Montanya only makes around 3,500 cases of wine a year. However, the very nice and helpful associate told us that if we put our names on the mailing list we could be on the waiting list for the club. They wouldn’t actually inform us when or if we were made members, wine would just arrive at our door. And today it did and I’m very happy!
The wines at De La Montanya were my favorite that I tasted on our whole vaction. I loved everything about this winery. The grounds are gorgeous, wines are fantastic and the people were so friendly. So in addition to being very excited about being in the club and being kept in supply of these wines, I now have 6 more wonderful wines to enjoy in the near future.
Filed under: Clubs, De La Montanya, Vineyards | Comments Off on We made the club!
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