Winc Is One of the Most Popular Wine Clubs. It’s Also One of the Worst We Tested.

While working on our guide to the best wine subscriptions, I got one question over and over again: “Are you going to test Winc?”

You may have seen (or heard) ads or read about this wine club online—if you Google “wine subscriptions,” it’s one of the first options that pop up. As an algorithm-based wine club, Winc asks you to take a quiz and answer a series of questions, and then it attempts to match wines to your preferences based on your answers. Unfortunately, we can’t recommend subscribing to this club due to its poor customer service, aggressive business tactics, and mediocre wines. Here’s what you need to know if you’re considering subscribing to Winc.

Why we don’t recommend subscribing to Winc

Good customer service was one of the key criteria we kept in mind while researching clubs for our guide to the best wine subscriptions. If you have questions about your wine or issues with your order, or if you need to pause or cancel shipments, a responsive customer service team can make or break your experience.

Unfortunately, I encountered multiple issues with Winc’s customer service and found some of its business tactics overly aggressive. At the time I was writing this article, Winc’s website said that its phone lines were down due to the pandemic. Jai Dolwani, Winc’s VP of growth, explained to me that this was due in part to a slow vaccination rollout in the Philippines, where the company’s offshore phone-support staff is located. Understandably, this service won’t return until the team is fully vaccinated. But if you’re a customer coming to Winc with questions and you don’t have this insider intel, it can feel as if the company is intentionally making it hard to get in touch (we wish Winc would be more transparent about this topic on its website). In the meantime, the only way I was able to speak with an actual human is by texting a customer service representative or by using Facebook Messenger or the live-chat feature on Winc’s website. However, you can’t use the website’s live chat (which is by far the easiest option to use) unless you’re already a Winc member. (Winc hasn’t seen a high volume of non-member inquiries, which is why this feature is available only to subscribers, Dolwani said.) This limitation can be frustrating, especially if you have questions about the club that you’d like to have answered before you decide to join. You can also email or use the form on Winc’s website to try to get in touch with customer support, but I only received generic responses to my queries using both those methods.

For basic questions about using Winc’s service, I resorted to texting a representative. The process was excruciatingly slow—in some cases it took over 40 minutes for them to answer a single question, and our “chat” went on for hours. Frankly, it seemed as if they wanted to get rid of me. When I emailed Winc our questions, I received only generic automated responses. I even tried reaching out to current and former employees of Winc to see if they could help answer my questions. I never heard from anyone until I emailed the company’s customer support team telling them I’d be writing this article. (Dolwani later said that these emails were missed and that it exposed a hole in the process, which the company aims to improve.) Eventually I spoke with Ashley Carone, a public relations representative for Winc. She told me she was surprised to hear that I’d had such a poor customer service experience and said it wasn’t indicative of a typical user’s experience. But this wasn’t an isolated incident—I had used Winc’s text feature (on different phones) and tried emailing multiple times over the course of my research.

And I’m not alone—at this writing, Winc has had 60 customer complaints lodged against it over the past three years on the Better Business Bureau’s website. The majority of complaints are from customers who experienced significant difficulty cancelling their orders or communicating with Winc’s customer service. Rick Copelan, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau branch in Santa Barbara County, California, where part of Winc’s business is based, told me part of the reason Winc has an F rating with the BBB is because it hasn’t responded to multiple complaints the bureau has sent. “I’m sure they’re getting far more complaints than from just the BBB,” Copelan said. Both Carone and Dolwani pointed out that other wine subscription services also have low scores on the BBB website. And although that’s true for competitors such as Firstleaf and Bright Cellars, unlike Winc they have fewer complaints, are accredited with the BBB, and have an A rating. (To be clear, we don’t recommend Firstleaf or Bright Cellars, either; you can read more about that in our guide to wine subscriptions.)

I encountered another issue when I attempted to buy à la carte wines without becoming a monthly member—something Winc claims you can do on its website, and a feature we appreciated in other wine clubs we tested. I found it was impossible. Once you select bottles and try to check out, you’re required to click a box to move forward in the process. This box on Winc’s website combines signing up for a membership with its terms and conditions (which tells you in very fine print that you’ll automatically be charged $60 every month after the initial discounted box). If you miss that detail (as many people have), you may not even notice those charges on your credit card until months later. Many subscription services use similar tactics, some of which could be considered “dark patterns”—web-design tricks that make you do things you don’t intend to do.

Carone told me that Winc’s à la carte option has not been available since May 2021 and won’t be again until the first quarter of 2022, when it rolls out its new website. But at this writing, Winc still lists the à la carte option in its terms and conditions and on its support page, even though the service hasn’t been available for six months. (Carone told me that Winc would be updating this information immediately to reflect the change in this interim period, but she said this in late October 2021, and as of a month after that, the update still hasn’t happened.) And although Dolwani told me the à la carte option represents only a small part of Winc’s overall business, I still think the site is formatted in such a way that makes it easy to inadvertently sign up for a monthly membership.

Once I discovered that I couldn’t check out without becoming a member, I tried texting a Winc representative to figure out if there was another way to buy à la carte bottles. As mentioned earlier, this exchange went on for hours, and the rep’s responses to my questions were vague and unclear. Ultimately, they told me the à la carte option wasn’t currently available. A colleague who was helping me test the purchase of à la carte bottles was eventually told something similar, and we live-chatted with a representative together to understand the situation. As a “test” to see if the à la carte option was available again, the representative we had been chatting with went ahead and charged my co-worker for a membership the following day without her consent (she had put bottles in her shopping cart and had already provided her delivery and payment information but had not authorized a purchase). To be fair, at our request, Winc immediately cancelled the order and reversed the charges. Dolwani said this was a misunderstanding on the part of Winc’s customer service representative.

Dolwani also acknowledged that Winc’s failure to remove the à la carte information from its website and properly inform its customer service team about the suspension of the service was an oversight. He said Winc is in the process of overhauling its website (the new version is planned to go live in early 2022), which will eventually give customers the option to choose between a one-time à la carte purchase and a monthly membership.

Ultimately, all of the issues I experienced with Winc’s customer service and the way I felt aggressively funneled toward joining the membership program made it impossible for me to recommend this wine club.

Are Winc’s wines any good?

Eh. Winc’s wines are just okay.

Don’t get us wrong: 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, which we inevitably poured down the drain after tasting. In general, we don’t have a lot of confidence in the quality of Winc’s wines.

Winc exclusively sells wines it produces itself. It doesn’t own vineyards, so it buys grapes in bulk to make into wine and/or it buys already-made bulk wine from international and domestic growers to bottle and then puts its own labels on them. In most cases, there’s no way to trace the exact appellation (the designated region where the grapes were grown) by looking at its wine labels. Typically the labels have more-general geographical locations like “California” or “France,” so the grapes could come from anywhere within that state or country. And although there’s nothing inherently wrong with vague origins, we’d venture to guess that most people don’t realize that’s what Winc is selling. Winc’s president and co-founder, Brian Smith, told me, “We don’t think of them as private labels, we think of them as brands. We design, produce, and sell innovative beverage brands. We leverage direct-to-consumer to connect with consumers … and it allows us to be more innovative than the traditional winery, more data-driven.”

Dolwani told me that if customers have specific questions about Winc’s wines, such as where the grapes originated, a customer service representative could pass those inquiries on to the winemaking team to see if they could provide more details. But Winc could be more up front about this information on its website to make it easier for buyers who want to know these particulars without having to deal with the company’s customer service.

Winc claims to strive for more sustainable winemaking practices. And it appears to be more transparent about its farming techniques than the makers of most other white-label or private-label wines you can find in the supermarket. But there’s still no guarantee these wines will taste better because of that, as we encountered in our brand-concealed tasting. Plus, after experiencing Winc’s business practices, we’re less inclined to take the company at its word about its sustainability claims.

To be clear, if you subscribe to Winc and are happy with the wines, I’m not suggesting that you should stop using the service—you should always drink what you like, without judgment. But side by side with the other subscription services we tested, Winc just couldn’t compete.

Where can you get inexpensive wines instead?

If you’re looking for a wine club that’s just as affordable as Winc, see the section on how to choose a wine club in our guide to the best wine club subscription services. Some of these clubs may include private-label wines, but overall the quality is likely to be better than that of the wines we tried from Winc.

If you’ve enjoyed Winc’s wines in the past and want to buy them again without subscribing, you can find certain bottles at retailers such as Whole Foods stores. We’d recommend doing that rather than joining the club.

You can also find great deals on similar bulk-wine blends at stores like BevMo, Costco, Total Wine & More, or Trader Joe’s. Some private labels, such as Mary Taylor Wine, are more transparent about their winemaking process, and the quality of their wines is much better than Winc’s. Don’t forget to check out your local wine shop, too, as many offer selections of bargain wines. If you seek out a reputable wine shop, a knowledgeable staff member can help you look for wines within your budget. (Eric Asimov, wine critic for The New York Times, offers some helpful tips for buying wine in person.)

If our recommended picks don’t meet your specific needs, we also offer advice on how to choose a wine club that works for you.

Why does Winc remain such a popular wine club?

Winc gets a couple of things right: fast reliable shipping and, more than anything else, a fun, lighthearted approach to buying wine. If your intention is to subscribe to a monthly membership, you probably won’t notice anything off about Winc’s website. One Wirecutter staffer who has used Winc for over a year told us they’ve been consistently happy with the service and haven’t experienced any hiccups that required them to contact a customer service representative (though they’ve since cancelled their subscription after reading this article). Unless you try to buy bottles à la carte or attempt to contact Winc’s customer service, you’re unlikely to have any issues.

Shipping is fast and convenient: Our Winc wines arrived just a few days after we purchased. (Our main wine club picks, Wine Access and SommSelect, may take longer to ship depending on when you sign up for your subscription.) Winc also ships to FedEx pickup sites if you’re unable to sign for deliveries at your home or work address. Winc doesn’t ship its wines using an ice pack in the summer months like our top picks do, but according to the representative I texted, Winc guarantees that FedEx will “properly store” the wine in transit or in the event of a delay.

Though Winc’s algorithm may not always be an accurate way to choose your wine, some people may find the quiz fun, fast, and convenient. Some customers may also be drawn to Winc’s flashy wine labels. That said, all of the professionals I spoke to were highly skeptical of clubs like Winc that use quizzes to choose wines, as quizzes are gimmicky and generally don’t do a great job of actually determining your tastes.

Unlike most other algorithm-based clubs, Winc at least gives you the option to choose your own wines besides what it recommends, so you’re not just locked into a single selection. And unlike most clubs of this kind, Winc gives you the option to buy organic, biodynamic, and low-sugar wines, which is nice if you have certain dietary restrictions or preferences. As mentioned earlier, though, you have to take Winc at its word or try to get in touch with its wine team if you want specific details about these bottles.

Despite Winc’s cutesy quiz, snazzy branding, and speedy shipments, we just can’t get behind its aggressive business tactics and abysmal customer service. If Winc implements changes to its customer service and website format, and if it offers more transparency about its wines, we may consider reviewing its club again in the future. But if you’re looking for a wine club that offers a better selection of wines and more information about the bottles it’s sending you, check out our guide to the best wine subscription services.

Sources

1. Richard Copelan, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau (serving Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo counties), phone interview, October 22, 2021

2. Ashley Carone, managing partner, Autumn Communications, phone and email interviews, November 3 and 4, 2021

3. Jai Dolwani, VP of growth for Winc, and Brian Smith, president and co-founder of Winc, phone interview, November 4, 2021