The 4 Best Wine Clubs of 2025
The Naked Wines club is different from most other wine clubs because you’re not locked in to a set number of automatic shipments. You have to manually order your wine each time you want it (a minimum of six bottles per order). In order to buy from the club, though, you still have to pay $40 per month to become an Angel, with that money accruing toward future orders. However, since Naked Wines sells only bottles that are exclusive to its club and can’t be bought elsewhere, Michele Thomas (the sommelier who helped us taste the wines) said the market price the club has determined is likely inflated. So you’re not necessarily saving as much as you may think—folks on Reddit have discussed this issue too. The wines, while very drinkable, weren’t better than most decent bottles you’d find at a grocery store.
Primal Wine offers really wild and funky wines, which we found to be more niche in style compared with wines sold by Helen’s. Thomas said these wines taste like Williamsburg, a hip neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. That said, we appreciate the paper pamphlet that comes with your order; this pamphlet provides some background on each wine, the winemakers, and food-pairing suggestions. It’s clear that Guido Cattabianchi, who selects the wines for the club subscription, is passionate about the producers and wines he chooses to include in each box.
Plonk Wine Club specializes in sustainably sourced, organic, and biodynamic wines. We tested the Mixed Wine Club, but overall we weren’t impressed with the wines we received in our order. They weren’t terrible, but we didn’t think they were special enough to receive in a shipment. One bottle of red did stand out, however: Il Farneto Giandon was woodsy and well made, and it had a nice finish. If you’re looking for a natural wine club, we think Helen’s offers more-interesting bottles for a comparable price.
The Waves, a natural wine club, had two wines we really enjoyed, but unfortunately it had two that were among our least favorites; Thomas described them as “structurally faulty.” The club also doesn’t include any information on the wines in your box, but that information can be found on the website. This club is relatively new, and we think it has some potential, but it wasn’t a favorite in our 2023 lineup.
Dry Farm Wines sells vegan wines (made without animal products in the fining process) and wines that are low in sugar. And the wines are tested by an independent lab, so you’ll know exactly what’s in them. If you have certain dietary restrictions, this may be the club for you. However, it doesn’t sell wines à la carte, so this club doesn’t meet the criteria we set for this guide. (A Wirecutter kitchen team member has tried this club and enjoyed it.)
Firstleaf typically sells wines with more regional specificity on the label compared with other algorithm-based clubs, such as Winc. Firstleaf offers “exclusives,” wine made by Firstleaf (instead of another producer) and sold exclusively by Firstleaf. It doesn’t own its vineyards; instead it buys grapes or juice from domestic and international sources to make its own wine. As with those of all algorithm-based clubs we tried, we found Firstleaf’s wine quiz to be pretty limiting, and we don’t recommend it.
The Bright Cellars quiz allows you to select just one option per question, which is very limiting considering most people have varied tastes. After you complete the Bright Cellars quiz, you have to provide your email before you can view its algorithm-selected wines. It also sells mostly private-label wines, which we suspect are being sold at inflated prices.
Winc uses an algorithm to select your wines, similar to Bright Cellars and Firstleaf. At the time of our testing, their site was formatted in such a way that made it easy to inadvertently sign up for a monthly membership (they’ve since redesigned their checkout format to make it clear you’re signing up for a membership). A couple of the bottles we tried were perfectly drinkable, and anyone looking for straightforward, uncomplicated wines would probably be happy with them. But there was also a pretty bad one we tried — the electric-pink, Kool-Aid–like So This Happened Rosé. In general, we don’t have a lot of confidence in the quality of Winc’s wines.
The Astor Wine Club from Astor Wines & Spirits—a well-respected wine shop in New York City—requires you to pay for your subscription in advance. And we think it’s too much cash to drop at once (you’d have to pay $450 upfront for the first three months). You also can’t skip shipments, so we opted not to test it.
The wines from Wine Awesomeness are more regionally specific than those offered by Winc. However, after speaking with a customer service representative, we learned Wine Awesomeness predominantly acquires its wines from winemakers who come to it looking to sell. Though there’s nothing wrong with that process, we were skeptical of how discerning this company might be in its selection process, and we opted not to test. That said, Wine Awesomeness offers wines produced by Mary Taylor, a respected white-label producer, so we may consider testing this club for a future update.
Palate Club requires you to do a wine tasting with four half-bottles of either white or red wine (this currently comes to $59), to gauge your preferences before you start receiving wine shipments. After tasting the wines, you rate them using the Palate Club app; this allows its algorithm to learn more about your preferences and to determine what to recommend to you next. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get in touch with a customer service representative after repeated calls during normal business hours, and we couldn’t leave a message because a voicemail box hadn’t been set up. So we dismissed this one.
90+ Cellars Wine Club is essentially a wine broker that works with wineries and vineyards to produce wines under its own label. These wines are sold at various retail stores and online, so we don’t think it’s necessary to join this club unless you already like 90+ Cellars wines and want the convenience of having them delivered.
Aside from the wine clubs listed above, we ruled out over 100 clubs for a variety of reasons, including unfavorable reviews, limited shipping options, exorbitant shipping prices, inflated wine prices, insufficient quality, lack of customization, poor replacement policies, limited wine options, poor customer service, lack of transparency, or the inability to buy wines à la carte.
This article was edited by Marilyn Ong and Marguerite Preston.
