If you enjoy tasting a new wine, chatting with other wine lovers about new wines and educating yourself on new wines in the market, then you can start a wine club. Here are a few pointers on how to start a wine club.
The first thing you have to do is to find the right people. This you can achieve by inviting people you know or advertising the new wine club online, or posting an ad in your local newspaper to attract members.
A good wine club usually profiles about four to six new wines at each meeting. This can be done by serving fresh and delicious food like cheese, crackers or grilled meat. At each meeting, a speaker is given a few minutes to talk about the wines for the day, touching on the flavours aroma, country of origin, and ages of the wines.
An average wine club meeting lasts for about two to three hours, with a 30-minute socialising break after the discussion and tasting of some bottles of wine.
After tasting the wines, members can score the wines being sampled on a scale of 0 to 10. The scores can be calculated, tallied and included in the club’s newsletter, which can be sent out to members sometime shortly after the meeting or posted on the club’s website if it has one.
You must note the type of wine that your club members like sampling. Good and quality wines cost money, so don’t be cheap in your selection of wines for your club’s meetings.
Aim to keep your per-bottle costs at reasonable but not cheap prices. You or another elected official of the club can purchase the wines for the meeting, and the total costs are divided by the number of members in the club.
Another way of drawing attention to your wine club is by collaborating with a local winery that can send samples of their products to your club meetings for members to taste and score or by the club visiting its wineries and vineyards. This visit can be publicised on your website or newsletter.
A wine club is easy to start, but it takes serious, determined and consistent leadership for it to stand the test of time. Connect with us for more information.
