A REALLY GREAT WINE CLUB
At last, a monthly wine selection based on merit, writes Michael Fridjohn
Wine clubs — as a way to buy wine for direct delivery to your home — have been operating in SA for over 30 years. Some are linked to producers and give priority to those who sign up to r eceive offers from the winery. Others are simply an online sales service driven by call-centre marketing. Until now, all have been an extension of producer mail-and-rail strategies or the surplus disposal discounts offered to companies able to guarantee a monthly off-take.
The launch of the Really Great Wine Club is a complete change to the formula. It puts the consumer ahead of the producers’ or retailers’ interests by making the key selection criterion the quality of the wine itself.
Over the years I’ve worked on hundreds of judging panels — in SA, but also in France, the UK, the US, Australia, and Chile. I also sample about 2,000 wines in blind tastings (in other words, with the labels out of sight) in my tasting room every year, producing ratings for the Wine Wizard website.
The Really Great Wine Club draws on my palate and experience to assemble its monthly offers: its buyer takes my scores from the website, excludes those wines that have not met the minimum points rating, and compiles the monthly hamper offers accordingly.
Members can sign up for one of three tiers (R650, R900 and R1,250) and a choice of red, white or both, knowing that the wines have been selected on merit and not because of a deal offered by an overstocked winery.
Members of the Really Great Wine Club pay no more for these curated, quality wine selections than they would if they shopped at the wineries’ cellar door. In addition they enjoy free delivery, a free online subscription to an Arena Group publication (the Sunday Times, Business Day, Financial Mail or Sowetan), free access to Michael Fridjhon’s Wine Wizard website and an app that has more than 4,000 tastings notes and over 1,000 wine-related articles (this alone is worth R750 annually) and discounted access to a number of wine events.