I didn’t really grow up in a family that drank wine.  My mom didn’t drink at all (except for the occasional gin and tonic on vacation) and my dad was and still is a loyal Irish Whiskey or Bourbon drinker.  Apparently his grandfather grew grapes on his property and made his own wine and my dad made homemade wine for years….so it is in my blood! But by the time I came around, my dad was sick of wine because he drank so much of his own haha

I had an occasional sip, but didn’t really drink any of it until college.  And the wine I drank in college was exactly what you’d expect…Franzia and Barefoot lol and never anything dry…it was always the sickening sweet flavors! If I did that now I’d be hungover for 6 weeks lol But back then, I couldn’t imagine drinking a dry wine.  One of my best friends grew up drinking wine with dinner every night, so she always drank super dry red wine which I thought was both incredibly impressive and incredibly disgusting. 

Here I am with the first wine glass I ever bought.  “Glass” is a loose term, because it was actually like a hard, clear plastic lol I didn’t trust myself enough to have real glass at college but I thought it looked good enough.  I really thought I was about to be the classiest god damn bitch.  It was my first time living in a college apartment instead of a dorm and I was going to be drinking Franzia out of a plastic wine glass…I mean, that was the picture of sophisticated adulthood to me.

But as the years went on, just like they said would happen, the sweet wines started to taste cloyingly sweet and I slowly started to lean towards drier wines.

For a year or so after college, I’d go through a red wine phase and then a white wine phase and then back again.  But about 2 years ago, my palate made its final (I think?) switch to preferring white wine.  My absolute favorites are a Pinot Grigio or a Sauvignon Blanc.  Although sometimes a good Chardonnay or Riesling hits the spot.

I think I got so into wine because having Celiac disease makes you feel somewhat limited.  You get like 4 beer options…meanwhile the craft beer trend is taking over the world! All my friends were trying hundreds of beers and I felt left out.  Once I discovered how many different kinds of wine there were, I was intrigued! It opened up a whole world of experiences for me and I wanted to learn all I could about it! I even signed me and my husband up for some wine tasting classes, just to get the basics down.  I’m lucky to live in Connecticut because we have the Connecticut Wine Trail–there are TONS of wineries and vineyards all over the state.  My favorite thing to do in the summer is vineyard hop and try all the different local varieties and hear the stories behind them.

As I got more into wine, I started wanting to try different wines that I didn’t usually encounter.  I had read about wine clubs before and thought maybe that’d be a fun place to start. I started reading a bunch of articles about which wine clubs were both great and affordable, because I didn’t have tons of money to spend every month.  Enter Winc.  It had great reviews and you couldn’t beat the price, so in 2016 I decided to sign up! I’ve been getting my monthly wine ever since 🙂

You start by completing a palate profile quiz so they can match you with wines you might like! You answer questions like what kind of chocolate or fruit you like…it’s pretty cool! Then they recommend several wines for you to try.  Once they ship them to you and you try them, you rate how they were on your app.  As you rate more wines, the app figures out which wines are best suited to your palate. Plus every time you rate 10 wines, you get $10 off 🙂 Good incentive.  Mine and my husband’s taste in wine are actually pretty similar (we both like light-bodied wine on the drier side), but he likes red wine and I like white.  With Winc, that’s no problem! You pick how many whites and reds you want in each box.  I usually get 3 whites and one red….my husband drinks less wine than I do haha

If you put 4 wines in your box, you get free shipping, so that’s what I always do.  Many of the wines are only $13 each, so it’s pretty affordable.! And you can skip any month that you want! There are some months that we’ll want to save a little money or we’ll have gone to a bunch of vineyards and don’t need any more wine, so we’ll just skip a month or two.  There’s no monthly fee or anything, so you don’t pay anything the months you skip! You only pay for the wine you actually do get.  And they’re great about refunds! If you don’t like a wine that you’ve tried, they’ll give you a refund on the account! I found out about this policy like 3 months after trying a wine I didn’t like and they still gave me a refund! haha

Although, a word of advice, they don’t carry many sweet or dessert wines, so if you’re new to the wine game you might need to work up to this! But for anyone who has been drinking sweet wine for a few years and is ready to test out some drier varieties, this is a perfect entry way!

If you’d like to try it out, you can use this referral code to get $20 of Winc wine! If you try it, let me know what you think! 🙂 Cheers, loves!