International Wine Club Premier Series April 2016 Review & Coupons

The International Wine of the Month Club sends its subscribers two wines each month, either two reds, two whites or one of each. Each estate-bottled, limited-production wine selected for shipment is chosen by a large panel of tasters, including both experts and lay wine enthusiasts, to ensure that each bottle will be a crowd pleaser. When you sign up, you have a choice of three levels of wine: Premier Series, Masters Series or Collectors Series. The Premier Series is the basic limited-production, estate-bottled offering. The Collectors Series is the most expensive, most exclusive offering. The Masters Series ships one bottle from the Premier Series and one bottle from the Collectors Series each month. The wines included in this review were from the Premier Series.

Your first shipment will include not only your wine and cellar notes, but also various welcome letters that explain what the club is and how it works.

After traveling around the world and scouting out the best wines available, Don Lahey submits his favorite wines to a two-tiered tasting panel for review. After consulting these panels of experts and lay alike, the best-loved wines get included in the club and shipped to people’s homes. For those who enjoy the wines and would like to purchase more, the International Wine of the Month club makes it especially easy to order more at a discount (or other wines, for that matter!). Additional discounts are available for those who order in bulk.

I especially love how the International Wine of the Month Club is affiliated with other clubs. As such, you can easily switch your monthly subscription between wine, cheese, flowers, chocolate, beer and cigar subscriptions. Wine for your birthday, chocolates for Valentine’s Day and flowers for Easter are all doable with this one subscription. How cool! (I’m secretly wishing for monthly deliveries of wine, cheese, flowers AND chocolate, but alas, four monthly subscriptions are outside of my budget!)

I love how the wines arrive well-packaged in recyclable inserts.

Each of the two wines arrives with comprehensive tasting notes, including recipes for suggested food pairings. Each set of cellar notes provides a nice introduction to both the winery and the appellation where the grapes are grown (as all bottles in the club are estate grown and bottled, this is usually the location of the estate).

My husband and I both loved this bottle of 2014 Bodegas Martínez Corta’s Cepas Antiguas Selección Privada Rioja (available to members for 2 for $41.95 for reorders)! Produced from Tempranillo grapes by the Martínez Corta family in Rioja Alta, Spain, this lovely wine contains notes of blueberry, cherry, plum, clove, cinnamon and vanilla. A medium-bodied wine, it had enough complexity to really excite us. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long. After aerating it, serve it with steak, roasted chicken, lamp chops, pork kebobs or paella.

This 2014 Tamellini Soave DOC (available to members for 2 for $43.95 for reorders) was produced in Veneto, Italy from 100% Garganega grapes. Unoaked, this wine took me off guard: upon first hitting my palate, its minerality and acidity reminded me of a hard cider. However, after a few seconds, this gave way to a lovely floral fruit bouquet. While I do not typically drink a lot of unoaked wines, I thought this one was fantastic. I’d happily drink it any day. Serve as an apertif or with seafood, chicken, pork, pasta or risotto.

I really enjoyed these two bottles of wine! I’ve gotten into a California big red rut recently (not that I’m complaining about it!), and I’m thrilled that the International Wine of the Month club has challenged me to branch out and try new things. If there’s one thing I’ve learned with this shipment, it’s that by limiting myself to bottles from California, I’ve really been missing out! Both of these bottles were great, and I look forward to what I hope are many more months of discovery ahead!

• Save $25 on your first 12 shipment order. Use coupon code  SAVE25.

• Save $15 on your first 6 shipment order. Use coupon code  SAVE15.

• Save $10 on your first 4 shipment order. Use coupon code  SAVE10.

Visit International Wine Club of the Month to subscribe or find out more!