There’s a good chance that you belong to a Texas winery’s wine club or some of the best-rated wine clubs in the US, such as Winc. When you receive your wine club shipment either in person or via shipping, there is most always something included with the wines to tell you what wines you just received. All wineries have different inserts and brochures for their wines. What are the different types of inserts and what is the best?
Let’s start with the looks. An insert can be as plain as a black and white photocopied letter sized piece of paper. Or the next step up would be a colored photocopied piece of paper. Next you can tell when a winery uses a printing company as the paper is usually glossy with colored print and photos. This can be a single double-sided piece of paper or the large sized paper folded into a four-page brochure. A winery can also produce a package insert with an envelope including separate card stock sheets resulting in multiple pieces of information about the wine club shipment.
Now let’s talk about the content. First, a lot of wineries include a note from the owners talking about what has happened with the winery, and of course a brief overview of the wines included. This helps the winery add a personal touch for their wine club members. One of the cool things about being a wine club member is having access to wines that may be limited in quantity, so only wine club members can enjoy them.
Of course, the major thing a wine club insert should include is to tell you what wines you just received. Is it enough to just list the wine names and vintages? Of course not. You can most likely read that just by looking at the bottle labels. So, you want more, but how much more?
What more is most commonly referred to as tech sheets. A tech sheet most commonly describes the wine’s characteristics like the grapes and their percentage in the wine, aging while making the wine, alcohol percentage, pH, Brix, TA, and cases produced. An important piece of information would be the vineyard(s) from which the grapes were grown. Vineyard information can be detailed describing the vineyard, owners, and more.
Besides the technical information, a detailed historical background of the wine and how it was made is sometimes included which is fun to read. Also adding to the tech sheet would be information such as what temperature to serve the wine, recommended food pairings, and most importantly, how long can the wine be stored. Some other information that is interesting to include are any wine competitions the wines may have won. Tasting notes are often included to help you identify what you may be smelling and tasting in the wine.
Along with food pairings, some wineries are including actual recipes that can be cooked at home to enjoy with one or more of the wines included in the shipment. Other items can be added such as trivia or just general fun facts about wine.
In order to help the winery sell more wine, listing extra wines that are available for sale can be included along with wines that are coming soon. Prices are vital in these cases to help wine club members know how much the wines will cost. Of course, contact information on how to order those wines is vital.
Wineries often have multiple levels of wine club members based on the number of bottles received per shipment. In these cases, for the insert, the winery shouldn’t make the wine club member confused by listing all the wines from the different bottle clubs and not identify the wines are particular to a certain number bottle club. Better yet, they should identify the wines available in the other bottle clubs, so the winery may do an upsell to the wine club member who may want to increase their bottle allotment to receive the other wines.
Besides other wines the wine club member can purchase, a part of the insert should be what upcoming events are happening at the winery for which the wine club member can participate, including bringing other friends who may eventually become wine club members.
Whatever your wine club insert is, you will want to store it away for when you open the wines, so you can refresh your memory as to what the wine is and also give something to discuss while enjoying the wine. Find that space in your file cabinet to store the wine club inserts, or better yet, the winery should offer a PDF file insert so it can be stored on a computer and let you go paperless.
What about you? What kind of wine club insert do you like?
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