Last year, I graduated from college the world’s youngest wino.
It was a little sad, really: I was supposed to be this bright-eyed, pretentious recent college graduate, tackling the hectic world of overpriced cappuccinos and overrated bachelor’s degrees. But that simply wasn’t the case.
Instead, I wasted my first postgraduate summer lazing through a lame part-time job during the day and zoning out with Netflix and bottles of Barefoot in the evening. Barf.
Because the Internet is creepy, Google soon detected my predicament and began bombarding me with suggestions for my future, via Facebook ads: Go to grad school. Join ChristianMingle.com. Become a nun. Sign up for a wine club.
One of those ads eventually reeled me in. Guess which.
Inspired by curiosity and boredom, I sprung for the wine club that had been tempting me for months from Facebook’s sidebar: Club W. (I soon thereafter spent the fall traveling in Europe, after which I landed my current job and moved out of my parents’ place. I’m not saying Club W was the driving force behind it all, but … I’m not not saying that.)
Club W starts your experience with a six-question quiz on flavor preferences, which determines your “palate profile.” This profile helps the club recommend three bottles of wine for you each month, with prices starting at $13 a pop. But you’re free to arrange your box of bottles however you’d like. And the best part is that each bottle comes with a little booklet of dumbed-down instructions on how to taste the wine, what to pair it with, and in which settings it’s best drunk—and sometimes it includes recipes for complementing meals.
Oh, yeah: and Club W’s winemaking facility is located in our very own Buellton.
Club W partners with winemakers, growers, and vineyards from around the world, but all their wines are bottled here. The centralized process aims to improve efficiency, knock down prices, and treat the environment with kindness. The company also produces wines from its own winery, called WINC.
Back in August, my first box of wines from Club W included:
• 2014 If a Tree Falls Riesling
I selected the wines based on Club W’s recommendations and whether I thought the labels were pretty.
Each bottle had its own profile on Club W’s website, which included background information on the wine and a short video explaining what to expect when tasting it. My favorite of the batch was the Cowtown Merlot (from Paso Robles, by the way), so I’ll share a few of my favorite moments from its explanatory video.
Sommelier Katie Delaney gave a 50-second low-down on the merlot via YouTube video, and here’s what she taught me:
• The wine is mostly merlot with a “tiny bit of cabernet in it”;
• It spent about six months chillaxin’ in an oak barrel before being bottled;
• It boasts flavors of red fruit “on the nose” (and because I had no idea what that meant, I got to use Club W’s handy-dandy jargon dictionary to figure it out);
• The oakiness makes it taste “dusty” (which again required some jargon dictionary browsing on my end);
• And the wine is fun and casual, and pairs well with many types of food.
Boom. All it took was one minute of wine education, and I could spend the rest of my evening binge-watching Grey’s Anatomy with some Cowtown Merlot and still feel good about myself, because at least I’d learned a few smart-sounding things about my drink of choice.
But Club W is more than just a “Wine Club for Dummies With Unjustifiably High Standards.” It’s actually a “Wine Club for Broke Dummies With Unjustifiably High Standards.”
First off, Club W allows you to skip as many months as you want, just in case you need that $45-ish for something more important than wine (which sounds ridiculous to me, but I won’t judge your choices).
Secondly, the longer you have a membership, the more boxes of free wine you rack up to gift to whomever you choose. (Pro tip: Gift them to other people who live in your house.) (Another pro tip: Create a second Club W account and gift them to yourself. Not that I’ve ever done that.)
Overall, Club W helped me break out of my sad-sack rut last summer and get started on a better path, heading straight toward the pretentious-recent-college-graduate life (with emphasis on “pretentious”).
You never know how joining a wine club might transform your daily routine. I recommend giving it a try.
Brenna Swanston doesn’t understand why wine would have a nose or taste dusty. Send your complaints about wine jargon to bswanston@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 3-10, 2016.