Self-isolation and work-from-home arrangements are starting to become our new normal. For many of us, alcohol consumption has become, more or less, a refuge during these dark times. If you’re a wine lover and would like to enjoy a bottle or two from the comforts of your home, premium wine subscription service Palate Club can deliver straight to your door.
On any given day, people will be milling about on the streets, doing window shopping, eating at restaurants, frequenting bars, among other things. But as the novel coronavirus sweeps through the world, our lifestyles are slowly changing to reflect how we respond to the COVID-19 crisis. Most of us are now sheltering at home to help flatten the curve, and the days seem arbitrarily long and slow.
It is no wonder that wine has become a welcome companion as we do virtual dinners with friends over Zoom, or hold happy hours with colleagues from our living rooms. Per a report from Vox, more Americans are drinking these days, with wine sales rising to 66%, and online purchases soaring by 243%, perhaps partly due to the closure of bars and lack of options when it comes to getting your fix of vino.
Indeed, online wine delivery has become a very popular option among drinkers. The trend has seen restaurants follow suit by offering wine pairings with their customers’ food orders, and liquor shops are also turning to home deliveries and pickups in order to further their income during one of the most difficult economic times for retailers and entrepreneurs everywhere.
Match with your perfect wine
If you’re looking for artisanal wines sourced from winemakers around the world, Palate Club deserves your attention. Not only does the company make excellent vintages available for shipment, it also offers a matchmaking app that will find wines that best fit your taste profile.
But unlike others who seek to tell you about food pairings or general tasting notes, Palate Club focuses on the wine itself—its characteristics and what about it you happen to like. With a team of expert sommeliers and data scientists, a master algorithm was built to make your next wine shipment more personalized.
Think à la Netflix for wine—after rating your current bottle, the app makes calculations based on over 200 wine traits that have been encoded into the database, and boosts your profile with more information about your palate. You will find, in more detail, your affinity to a wine’s acidity, body, oak, sweetness, tannins, alcohol, and fruitiness—giving you a better idea of your preference of certain wines over others.
The ultimate blind tasting experience
So many wine purchases are often influenced by mass marketing promotions and reviews. On one hand, there is nothing wrong with this, and if it can be a stepping stone for you to discover more labels to enjoy, then why not? On the other, it dilutes the process of truly getting to know an excellent bottle—for how can you really tell if you like it when a critic’s or a restaurateur’s palate is so very different from your own? How do you find that one excellent wine made for your taste?
The answer can be found through Palate Club’s blind tasting approach. All wines shipped to you have the labels covered. It gives you an opportunity to focus on the taste and not the winery or brand, doing away with any preconceived notions you might have on what’s good and not. Then you can rate the bottle via the app and make your judgment based on your taste alone, without any bias that might come from knowing the provenance. It’s the most accurate rating system there is.
The more wines you rate, the better and smarter the app becomes. It grows with you, thanks to artificial intelligence, and unlocks more information on your profile. The data also allows Palate Club’s team to make selections and shipments at a greater extent to meet your expectations. And should it happen that you are not satisfied with a certain bottle, you can have it replaced—free of charge.
The most flexible wine club
The genius of Palate Club extends to making sure that customers enjoy shopping as much as drinking. You can purchase wines individually from the online wine shop, or you can avail of a subscription.
The membership is very flexible, too—you can choose to have the wines delivered to you monthly, or every two months, or even every three months. You can also select the price point of the bottles sent to you (most range from $17 to $59). Lastly, you can opt whether to receive more reds or more whites or a balance of both, and to have repeat shipments of favorites or continue discovering new labels.
Based in California but shipping all over the U.S., Palate Club has partnerships with established and up-and-coming winemakers both, and is constantly in a quest to find the next good bottle to include in its selection.
Keep safe, and drink moderately
As the days continue to reveal themselves—we must continue to stay inside, keep safe, and stay strong. Avail of the less dangerous option always, whether it’s buying essentials or ordering wine.
There are no bars and no parties now, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a little fun. Revel in those small moments of joy when they arrive at your door—and if it comes in the form of a Palate Club wine shipment, all the better.