A wine buying social experiment
6 Sep 2009
- Image by CascadeAndSTAN via Flickr
A month ago I mentioned that I have been impressed by the potential of the wine newsletter sent by The Wine Gang. I am excited to say that I have done a deal with them for the Wine Conversation to give away 5 free subscriptions to their newsletter, worth £20 per year.
However, being an inquisitive and social chap, I thought I’d do it in my own way and seeing what we can learn from it.
My contention is that the best wine sites (& newsletters) need to balance learning with buying advice.
I believe that this newsletter, arranging its reviews not by style or region, but by retailer, makes it much easier to use it to buy better wines, and thus encourage subscribers to try new wines and even trade up with confidence. Most importantly, it can be used without making you change where you currently buy your wines (but you can).
So, here’s what I’m thinking (for stage 1): …
At £20 per year, the cost of the subscription works out to £1.67 per month
I’m looking for 5 people who would like to receive the newsletter (and browse the archives) of The Wine Gang (FREE), and all I ask is that you commit to answering this question: “how have you saved £1.67 (or more)“?
- It could be that you know you spend £6.99 on a decent bottle of wine, but you find two worth £5.99 you really enjoyed drinking
- It could be that you discover a wine you might have considered buying rated poorly, so you bought something else & saved that money?
- It could be that you found a wine worthy of giving as a gift that cost less than you expected
- Maybe it saved you buying another wine book (I hope not too many, they need love too)?
- Or maybe it is something else … there must be other things worth £1.67
- Or maybe you didn’t – and I’d like to know that too
I’d like to hear your thoughts (especially as this month they rated the wines of Majestic who just reduced their minimum purchase to 6 bottles). I’d love to know if YOU, wine drinkers, found value in this product. I’d like to share those experiences on this blog and on twitter.
Stage 2 will involve drinking some of your favourites together, maybe sharing the moment online, but I’ll save that for another day – but The Wine Gang are organising a Christmas Wine Tasting event so watch this space
So, who wants to test this out?
Leave me a comment below and I’ll see how many volunteers I get and the decide how to apportion the subscriptions.
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Tags: Beverages, experiment, newsletter, Shopping, subscription, wine, wine tasting
September 6th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Ooh! I’m interested, but have participated in some od your tastings etc so understand if you want to give others a chance.
September 6th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Yes…very interesting.
I’ve been dubious about the “Gang” from the start. But would love to be proved wrong.
Consider me a willing subject.
September 6th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Hey,
Definitely interested in this. Have been firmly in the £3 a bottle Merlot camp I’m starting to expand my tastes and the amount I spend per bottle so it’d be interesting & useful to have a bot of guidance
Cheers
Kat
September 6th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
I would love to take part, love the new online wine tasting thing, would be great to be involved, learned so much about wine in the last year thanks entirely to the internet and its wine tweeps.
September 6th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
I’m definitely interested, I’ve only recently got interested in wine and don’t know much outside of what I like, so testing out an educational resource really appeals!
September 6th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Very interested and happy to help.
September 7th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Thank you to all these volunteers. I’ll put something together and then share it with you in more detail after I get a couple of events out the way. Check out the tasting tonight
September 7th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
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September 9th, 2009 at 11:39 am
This sounds very interesting – I’d love to be considered! I discovered this blog through following @thirstforwine on twitter as I’m slowly but surely gaining interest in finding and enjoying good wine – but currently without anything to read or help me! Thanks for the blog!
September 15th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Hope im not too late, but this does sound interesting. Good reviews of easily accessible wines are always a bonus.
My tip for saving has been checking out some of the wines NOT on offer, but cheaper. Many people (myself included!) probably just look at the offers in the supermarkets and think “oo a £4 wine that was £8, it must be good”, when most of the time it was never worth £8.
My best find so far (and probably hard to beat) is Sainsbury’s Montepulciano D’Abruzzo at just £3.31 a bottle – incredibly easy to drink, no tannins and nice and fruity. Super bargain. Buy buying plenty of this ive saved myself plenty of £1.67’s!!
September 17th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Hi – I hope I am not too late here, but I just discovered your website this morning. We are starting a new website called: Roman Collar Restaurant Ratings located at http://www.romancollarrestaurantratings.com Since I realized that Catholic priests seem to know all of the best restaurants, I decided to combine my love of travel with this little known fact. We are inviting readers worldwide to submit their positive reiviews of restaurants, food, drink and share their cultures. So by receiving the free newsletter subscription we will be saving untold dollars by making interesting connections all over the world. We could not even buy that kind of fun. So even if we are not your winners, please join us as we get going – the website currently has an explanation of what we will be doing, but we expect to officially kick it off in a couple of weeks. Also, please join us on Twitter at: @HeavenlyDining Thanks so much.
September 25th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
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