Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Wine Clubs & Your Budget
At nearly every winery you visit, there will be two sets of prices, and often,
two sets of pouring facilities. One will be for walk-in visitors, and the
other for members of its “wine club.” This is simply a fancy mechanism for
drumming up guaranteed business. Club members usually “subscribe” to
receive a certain amount of wine each year. Membership can get you dis-
counts on wine, in part because you'll be buying by the case. Obviously,
this isn't an arrangement you'll want to enter into at many wineries, espe-
cially since you have to pay shipping costs, so before you sign on the dot-
ted line, make sure you
love
that winery. I mean, really
lurrrrve
it. For
wineries without distribution connections to liquor stores, and there are a
lot of them, clubs may be the only way to secure some bottles on a regu-
lar basis without a fuss.
Just so you're warned, most wineries are only permitted by law to ship
wine to Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa,
Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New
Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina,
Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Domaine Chandon
(p. 249) is one of the few places where you might
actually consider casually joining the wine club, because some of varieties
of membership are free but still grant you discounts on purchased wine.
In fact, if you know you want to buy a case of something anywhere, look
into joining the place's membership club (just about everyone runs one),
and because if it's free, you may save cash.
cheeses and salamis, but in truth, you'll want to bring your own nibbles, and they
don't mind if you do. There are no tours (the company is too small), but Armida
(Ar-
meed
-a) also sells a savvy line of Ed Hardy-style, skateboarder-ready souvenir
clothing. Locals clearly come here to hang out on weekends; on one recent visit,
I watched a mom and her son, who was around 10, play with the bocce balls on
the course below the patio. It's a warm-hearted atmosphere without a slice of pre-
tension. Meanwhile, folks chatted, accompanying dogs smiled, and a general
sense of good vibrations prevailed. Most of their products aren't as expensive as
PoiZin and cost $19 to the upper $30s.
What sets
Rodney Strong Vineyards
(11455 Old Redwood Hwy., Healdsburg;
%
800/678-4763; www.rodneystrong.com; daily 10am-5pm with tours at 11am and
3pm)
apart is the fact that it's housed in a sort of segmented circular 1970 building
that more or less carves off different functions of winemaking into different wings.
In its time, it was a bold experiment in industrial architecture, but as such things
often are, it was quickly outgrown by success. Visitors make a self-guided circuit in
a loop of the various aspects (except the “crush pad,” which was moved away years
ago), inhaling the warm aroma let off by the wine holding tanks. The grounds here
