How To Start a Wine Club

How to start a wine club and find recurring revenue

Many wineries find themselves wondering how to start a wine club. It’s a tempting elixir: Recurring revenue in the wine business? That sounds so good it makes you want to pop your finest champagne.

But, a wine club isn’t a surefire bet. In fact, wine clubs are a losing bet for many wineries, which are already in a rough spot as an industry.

It’s not all sour grapes, though. For those that pull it off, wine clubs DO offer recurring revenue, a way to attract new members, and a channel for expanding their business well beyond their local vineyards.

Grab your favourite bottle of wine, some food pairings, and your favourite glass. It’s time to learn how to start a wine club. (Without any whining.)

Why start a wine club in 2026

There’s nothing like the tasting-room of a winery. It’s where you get a chance to win customers over right then and there. But, tasting rooms are often seasonal, ebbing and flowing.

With a wine club, you can drive recurring revenue that allows you to breathe a little easier during those off-season periods. That is, if your wine club is successful. But, what’s success look like in today’s market?

The honest market picture.

Okay, there’s a little whining allowed. The direct-to-consumer wine market has suffered recently, to the tune of a 15% reduction in volume and 6% in value in the shipping channel in 2025.

On top of this, some even claim only half of wineries are profitable. With DTC wine shipping dropping and winery profitability up in the air, it’s easy to feel as if there’s little hope. You’ll find only “optimism” on this tasting sheet, for there’s hope.

Why clubs still win for operators.

Despite the uneven state of the industry and a slight decline in the DTC and wine subscription model, wine clubs can still offer a win:

• The average winery can attribute 53% of sales to tasting rooms and wine clubs, going up to 78% revenue in some areas.

• The top 25% of wineries increased DTC revenue 22% in 2025.

• The average bottle of wine sold via DTC hit an all-time high of $56.78 in 2025.

While wine clubs may not offer the guaranteed, repeat business some imagine, they can and do provide healthy streams of revenue for many wineries.

Now, how do you pop the cork and start a wine club?

Step 1: Choose your wine club model

There’s no single model for wine clubs. Instead, there are typically three that wineries choose to go with, each one impacting your inventory planning, fulfilment process, and potential margins.

While there are countless subscription models in general, most wineries choose from the following three:

Curated clubs/winemaker’s select.

Take on the role of a virtual sommelier with this approach, leaving you in control of the wine picks for every shipment. Similar to a guided wine-tasting experience, the curated model gives you a chance to flex your expertise in the wine industry while taking customers on a journey.

This model can come in one tier, or offer various tiers that increase in price while offering different wines. No matter the route you choose, everyone in each tier receives the same varietals.

Fulfilment complexity: Low. Because you pick every bottle for each tier, you know exactly what inventory demands will look like across your wines.

Margin potential: Strong and stable. With you in control, you can build each shipment around wines that offer the best ROI, or include those that you’ve had more trouble moving at your winery.

While the curated approach is the most predictable, keep in mind your choices can have consequences. Without the ability to substitute wines, some members will inevitably skip certain months if they don’t like what you offer. Meanwhile, offloading tons of unpopular wines via your club will leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.

Member’s choice (pick-your-own) clubs.

The member’s choice approach sits opposite the curation model, letting members customise each shipment to their liking.

With the member’s choice club, you typically offer a select list that keeps cost within range of the club. Like the curated approach, you can offer various tiers that expand what options are available.

Fulfilment complexity: High — the heaviest lift of the three. By letting members take control, you have little way of predicting what inventory needs will look like. On top of this, picking and packing every shipment will take more time and care, as each order will be unique.

Margin potential: Weaker per shipment, stronger over the lifetime. Members will typically choose popular wines, which are likely the best value. This means your per-shipment margins won’t be as high as other models. But, by letting people stay in control, you increase the chances of them liking their shipments, making them more likely to stay subscribed longer.

While arguably more work than the curated model, the member’s choice model is likely to result in satisfied customers that stick around for the long haul.

Allocation and waitlist models.

Finally, there’s the allocation or waitlist model. With this model, members sign up for the privilege of accessing high-demand wines during a specific window. After the window closes, those wines become available to the public.

Unlike the other two, this one prioritises the scarcest wines over easy access to different wines each month or quarter. This model can also apply to your greater selection of wines if they’re prone to selling out, as the scarcity itself becomes the product or main draw of your club.

Fulfilment complexity: Moderate, but bursty. Members get a purchase window for their allocation rather than an automatic recurring box, so shipments cluster into release windows. That creates intense short spikes of pick/pack and compliance volume, with calm stretches in between.

Margin potential: Highest of the three, with a catch. Scarce, high-demand wine needs no club discount at all. The membership and the access it provides is the perk. But it only works if demand genuinely exceeds production.

This model can be highly profitable for you, while ensuring your most loyal customers get access to the wines they want. But again, this model really only works if you have wines that frequently sell out, otherwise the other two models are the ones to consider.

Step 2: Price your tiers for margin

How much should your wine club membership cost? There’s no single answer, as a lot of this depends on the kinds of wine you carry and the market you’re operating in. But, there are some steps you can take to land on the right number.

Typical tier price bands.

You might have what you think is the best pinot noir in all the land, but you can still price yourself out of an audience. Before you slap a high-dollar tag on your club, keep in mind the average price per-bottle shipped via DTC in 2026 reached a record high of $56.78.

With that in mind, consider that many wine clubs offer a tier-based system, which breaks down like:

• Entry tier (2 – 3 bottles): With the DTC per-bottle cost mentioned before in mind, this tier could land anywhere from $115 at the low end, up to $170 if you’re landing closer to the average bottle price.

• Core tier (6 bottles): Roughly $340 in bottle value at the DTC average, again, fluctuating depending on the price of your bottles.

• Reserve tier (6 – 12 premium bottles): This tier should be reserved for highest-value members, offering wine that’s beyond the DTC average price.

Whatever you charge, the club price should read as a benefit, offering anywhere from 10 – 20% off when compared to your tasting-room retail prices.

The per-shipment cost stack.

Focusing only on the cost of your bottles would be failing to see the forest for the trees.

While the price of the wines is important, you need to focus on the per-shipment cost, keeping in mind:

• Wine total cost of goods sold (COGS) per box.

• A molded-pulp or corrugated wine shipper, roughly $1 – $3 per unit.

• Carrier cost with adult-signature service, roughly $10 – $30 per shipment depending on zone and weight.

• Payment processing on the recurring charge for each member purchase.

• Compliance overhead, including: permits, excise and GST filings, and per-state reporting amortised across shipments.

If you’re not well-versed in general wine ecommerce, make sure to read up on best practises and shipping compliance.

A worked shipment P&L.

Before you launch your club, you also need to run a worked shipment profit and loss (P&L) statement to determine whether your pricing works out.

Calculate what this looks like for each tier before you start publishing prices. Use the following example as a guide, swapping out the numbers with your own:

• Core-tier shipment of six bottles: $300

• Total wine COGS for the shipment: $120

• Shipment costs: $2.50 for packaging, $22 for ground shipping with signature

• Fees: $9 in processing fees and $8 in amortised compliance cost

With the above in mind, you’d take the core-tier shipment and subtract everything else, leaving you with $138.50.

Swap in your own numbers and crunch them, then determine if the end result looks reasonable, or if you’re on the road to ruin.

Note: Consider charging a flat $10 – 15 shipping fee for anything below six bottles, with shipping built into six bottles and above. This will help offset the various charges that come with shipping wine, while rewarding those who opt for a larger tier.

Step 3: Build compliance into every recurring shipment

Selling alcohol online requires compliance with a number of laws and regulations, many of which depend on the state. Not only this, you need to re-run compliance checks at every billing cycle for each member, ensuring everything still checks out.

But, fear not. You can have members wining and dining, wherever they are (save two states), by taking the right steps.

Check state permissibility on every renewal.

As of 2026, 48 states and Washington, D.C. support winery DTC shipping. Mississippi started allowing it in 2025, while Utah allows no DTC wine shipments at all. Meanwhile, Delaware has DTC laws in place that are highly restrictive, making the state a no-go for many.

Laws can and will change, so make sure you’re always current with the laws of any state you’re shipping to. You’ll also want to check compliance for every member each shipment, as people can move, thus changing what compliance entails.

Adult signature on every delivery.

With state compliance taken care of, you need to make sure your shipment method is also able to deliver alcohol, including requiring an adult signature for every delivery.

Also keep in mind that the USPS can’t ship alcohol, while only FedEx and UPS carry wine. You’ll also want to avoid UPS SurePost and FedEx Ground Economy, as both hand shipments off to USPS at the end, which can’t legally deliver wine.

Licences, permits, and carrier agreements.

Before launch, you need a federal TTB basic permit plus a DTC shipper permit in nearly every destination state.

Each state sets its own licence fees, volume caps, product restrictions, and excise and GST reporting cadence. Look up the fees in each state you’re shipping to, multiply that number by twelve months, and you’ll have a clearer picture of administrative costs.

When a member moves.

It’s entirely possible you have wine club members that move from a compliant state, to Utah or a dry county. In this instance, you need to flag this shift before shipping so you can avoid an illegal shipment (and the fines that come with it).

For every recurring shipment, you should check:

• That you have a valid TTB permit and destination-state DTC permit

• Destination address in a permitted state and locality

• State volume cap not exceeded for this member or this period

• Excise and GST calculated and queued for filing

• FedEx or UPS label with adult signature required (21+)

• Carrier-approved packaging

• No USPS-final-mile services

You can also streamline much of the above by using an integration with a service like Alcohol-2-Consumer, which connects BigCommerce with Sovos ShipCompliant. This enables automation of numerous compliance checks, making it easier to stay on top of customer shifts.

Step 4: Design the member experience to fight churn

One of the core benefits of wine clubs is that they offer ongoing, consistent revenue. That entire point is moot if you don’t get people to stick around. This is why it’s important you design the member experience in a way that combats churn and encourages people to stick around.

Know your churn benchmarks.

Some churn is inevitable, no matter how your cabernet sauvignon hits. Instead of aiming for no churn, pay attention to the benchmarks:

• Annual member retention for wine clubs sits at 64 – 77%, meaning up to 36% of members will churn each year.

• Average member tenure is at 30 months, six months lower than it was in 2025.

• Churn is 42% higher for members acquired through a promo period.

It’s important to keep that last point in mind anytime you decide to run a promo. While a promo might see a surge in sign-ups, many of those members will churn when the price climbs back up.

Onboard for the first shipment.

You’re not just delivering a box of wine. You’re delivering an entire experience. This experience starts from the moment someone signs up

Set the tone and send:

• A welcome email the moment someone signs up

• A pre-charge email before the first billing cycle

• Tracking confirmation and a personal note when the box ships

As part of your communications with each box, include tasting notes, along with teasers about what’s coming in the next month.

Flexibility features that keep members.

Beyond communications, there are also features that can help keep members around.

Even if you’re opting for a curated experience, you still want to give members control over their subscription with:

• Skip shipments: Make it easy for members to log in and skip a shipment without penalty.

• Automatic card updates: Failed payments can result in someone not returning. Make sure you have automatic notifications in the event of an expired card or failed payment.

• Pause: Before someone cancels, have your system offer a 1 – 2 shipment pause for them instead.

Again, churn will happen. But keeping members in control of their subscription will only help you, and improve their impression of your brand.

Detect at-risk members early.

Ideally, everyone who joins your club will happily sip along for years to come. But, for those who are at risk of churning, there are signs you can look for to get them on your radar:

• Check for recency of purchases beyond the club

• Identify if they’ve had any tasting-room visits

• Note low email open rates from particular members

• Flag those who never customise or interact with their shipment

If any of your at-risk members are also some of your highest-value members (They buy a lot of wine), consider sending a personalised discount that entices them to stick around.

P.S. It’s also a great idea to brush up on how to deliver the best ecommerce customer service.

Step 5: Choose your wine club tech stack

How you decide to set up your wine club tech stack depends largely on your operating model and your long-term goals. To help you decide, let’s take a look at wine-specific platforms, and then the broader ecommerce market.

Wine-specific club platforms.

Wine-specific management software — WineDirect, vinSUITE, VineSpring, and others — can be a great fit for those offering tasting-room-based experiences and no broader ecommerce experiences.

Specialist wine club management software will bundle winery workflows into a single system, including things like:

• Club membership management

• Tasting-room POS support

• Compliance integrations

• Club release functionality

While the above can make it easier to quickly launch a wine club experience, keep in mind these wine-specific platforms will limit you if you wish to expand into further ecommerce markets, and have limited integrations with third-party tools.

General platform plus apps.

Whether you plan on sticking solely with a wine club experience or want to branch out into additional ecommerce operations, a general platform with apps and integrations is a great route.

With this route, you can keep your options more open than with a wine-specific platform, while also benefitting from greater support for third-party tools. For example, BigCommerce allows:

• Catalogue, checkout, payments, tax, promotions, and other baseline features

• Marketplace apps for recurring billing, alcohol compliance, age verification, and more

• Subscription and membership support

• Scalability and support for multiple stores and international markets

With more than 1,200 apps available on the marketplace, and API support for countless others, BigCommerce offers a path without limitations. See for yourself and try it for free.

How to decide.

When trying to decide between a specialist wine platform and a general ecommerce platform that utilises apps and integrations, it’s important to think about the major features you’ll need as well as your long-term goals.

Consider the below core functionality, and then ask yourself if you plan on expanding into B2B/bulk wine sales, or have ecommerce ambitions outside of wine.

Neither column is the wrong answer. If club allocations and the tasting room are the whole business, the specialist column earns its keep. If the club is one revenue stream inside a larger wine ecommerce operation — multi-category catalogue, wholesale portal, content — the general-platform column keeps you from outgrowing your stack.

Step 6: Run your launch checklist

Your planning has matured. Now, this barrel-aged strategy is ready to launch.

Make sure you get all the tasting notes just right with this launch checklist:

1. Secure permits: federal TTB basic permit in hand, plus a state DTC shipper permit for every state on your launch list

2. Sign your carrier agreement: an executed FedEx or UPS alcohol shipping agreement, with carrier-approved packaging specs confirmed

3. Publish tiers and terms: club tiers, pricing, cadence, cancellation policy, and auto-renewal terms live on your site

4. Test recurring billing end to end: a full cycle in a test environment, including the automatic card updater and the failed-payment retry sequence

5. Configure the compliance engine: state rules, per-state volume caps, and tax settings loaded and verified against your permit list

6. Verify first-shipment logistics: packaging tested, and Adult Signature Required (21+) labelling confirmed on a live test label

7. Build the member communications calendar: welcome email, pre-charge notice, shipment tracking, and post-delivery follow-up, scheduled and templated

8. Designed tasting-room signup: a two-minute signup flow at the counter, with a staff incentive attached to every new member

9. Stand up the KPI dashboard: churn rate, average member tenure, and per-shipment contribution margin tracked from day one

10. Send the pre-charge notice: a notice sent everything that acts as a retention tool and a consumer-protection expectation for auto-renewing programmes

On top of the above, you’ll want to get on top of a great ecommerce marketing strategy. This should span your website, social media, email marketing, and beyond, helping you grow your audience well into the future.

The final word

Without a wine club, there’s almost no getting around the seasonality in the wine industry. But, with a successful DTC business in place, you can build a durable, year-round revenue stream.

It’s essential your approach is engineered and not improvised. Ensure this by:

1. Picking your wine club model against the thresholds outlined in step 1

2. Building a per-shipment P&L before setting any tier prices

3. Confirming your state list, permits, and carrier agreements before any signups

Remember that your base price needs to balance profitability with accessibility, as members acquired during a promo period are more likely to churn.

Don’t downplay the importance of the right ecommerce platform. While a wine-specific platform can make startup easier, keep in mind a broader platform, like BigCommerce, can keep more options on the table in the long run. Like a well-stocked, beautifully laid out charcuterie board.

FAQs about starting a wine club