Lazy Sunday: Netflix for Wine

Check it out: WineQ - basically a choose-it-yourself wine club, clearly modelled after the very successful Netflix DVD rental service.  From the How It Works page:

All the wines you see on our site are hand-crafted and sold by small, family-owned wineries in California, typically producing less — sometimes much less — than 10,000 cases a year.

Certainly another way to introduce people to your wine.  But ideally, you'd get them to sign up for *your* wine club, where the margins are better.  As with RadCru or wine.woot, the goal is one-to-one access to someone who has sampled your wine.

Interesting note: WineQ will pay you $10 to get someone to sign up.  In other words, they have an affiliate program.

Wineries in the audience:  what do you think about WineQ?

Comments

[eljefe]

Well, Twisted Oak is a WineQ winery. I've decided to give them a try because it's easy and because it's an idea that has some unique aspects. One thing I've started is talking about the wine from another winery on WineQ that is made from the same vineyard as ours (Tanner Vineyard Syrah.) It's one way that WineQ members can "theme" their queue selections - in this case to taste them side by side. If WineQ can get their members excited about the wines and the different ways they can build a queue, I'll sell wine in ways that I might not have otherwise.

[JWG]

I don't quite understand why, as a wine consumer, I'd be willing to pay $5 a month just for the privilege of buying wine from WineQ. I can go to a multitude of other sites (both on-line and brick & mortar) and buy wine without a membership fee. I like to support small production wineries and in general, like the idea behind the WineQ website, but I can keep my own list if it means saving $5 every month.

[Marshall from WineQ]

JWG: For that $5 a month, you get unlimited free shipping on orders over $35. You won't find that at any other online store, and you'll probably spend that much in gas driving to and from the brick & mortar! :)