The wine club and the price of the second shipment
Most tasting rooms will pour for nothing once a visitor signs up for the club. The signature buys a run of boxes, and the boxes are what the offer is selling.
· 5 min read
Somewhere between the second pour and the third, an Arizona tasting room often makes the same offer. Sign up for the club today and the flight is on the house. Joining costs nothing, and the person behind the counter usually means it kindly. What the form commits a visitor to is a series of boxes of wine, charged to a card on file and sent or set aside several times a year until somebody cancels.
It is a purchase, and it is best priced by what it costs over a year.
What the form commits a member to
The terms below are the ones each winery published on its own club page in October 2026. Alcantara, Oak Creek and Dos Cabezas say plainly that joining costs nothing, and three of the five pour free for members: Alcantara Vineyards gives six free tastings a year, Golden Rule pours for a member and up to four guests, and Oak Creek for a member and three guests on a set number of visits.
| Winery | Shipments a year | Bottles each time | Commitment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alcantara Vineyards, on the Verde River near Cottonwood | 4, 3 or 2, by level | 3, 6 or 12 | one year; cancel in writing 30 days before the next shipment |
| Oak Creek Vineyards, Cornville | 4 for pickup, 3 if shipped | 2 to 6 for pickup, by level | one year, with an option to renew automatically |
| Golden Rule Vineyards, Willcox | 2, in April and October | 6 | the first shipment, then 7 days’ notice |
| Bodega Pierce, Willcox, tasting room in Clarkdale | 2, spring and fall | 3, 6 or 9 | none stated on its page |
| Dos Cabezas WineWorks, Sonoita | 4 | 3, 6 or 12 | none stated on its page |
Only Bodega Pierce prints what a box costs: roughly $75 to $90 for three bottles and $150 to $180 for six, before shipping and tax. A member at the six-bottle level there spends about $300 to $360 a year on two boxes before either is added. Elsewhere the discount is the part on show: 10 to 20 percent at Alcantara by level, 20 percent on every purchase at Golden Rule Vineyards, whose rules ask for one shipment at sign-up and let a member leave at any time afterward.
The third box
The first box arrives while the visit is still a good memory, and the second while a few bottles from the first are still in the rack. The third is the honest test, because it lands in whatever month the winery releases it. If that box would still be welcome, a club is a fair way to buy wine from a place worth supporting, and the discount is real. If not, the free flight was the most expensive pour of the day.
The same offer in Rioja
Wineries in Spain sell the same arrangement as a club de vinos or a club de socios, and the visit is the opening there too. Bodegas Puelles, a family winery in Ábalos in La Rioja, sends members of its Club Primera Línea 12 bottles a year for €140 and invites them and the people they bring on guided visits. The subscription is yearly with no minimum stay. Bodegas Diez del Corral, in Anguciana, sells the whole year at once: a single card payment of €220 for 24 bottles and two magnums, sent in two shipments, in November and May, with an invitation to the bodega at harvest to taste every wine it makes. One prices the year up front, the other lets it run until it is stopped, and both start by getting someone through the door.
Credit in Spain has borrowed the same opening. Short-term lenders there often make the first loan free, and Wandoo says so in plain terms on its own site: a first loan repaid on time costs nothing, and every loan after it carries a rate set by amount and term. The free loan is the waived tasting fee. The second loan is the club, and like the club it is the one to price before saying yes to the first.
The reasoning carries over. Nothing is earned on something given away, so the earning sits in what follows, and a customer who found the first one painless is the likeliest to return. The figures to find before accepting belong to the next loan: its annual rate and the total to pay back on an ordinary amount, which Spanish consumer credit law requires a lender to state before a contract is signed. Then take the free one only if never needing the next would be fine.
Money for rent or food in a month when the wages have not come is a separate problem, and no free offer of any kind answers it. In Spain the social services of the local ayuntamiento cost nothing to approach and can assess a household for one-off emergency help.
Shipping and leaving
One question belongs on any Arizona club form: when the boxes can travel. Wine fares badly in an Arizona summer, and some wineries here hold shipments through the hottest months, as Oak Creek does with its online orders while the heat lasts. A member who chooses pickup instead should expect a drive, best made with someone along who is not tasting.
Leaving takes a date in a calendar. Alcantara wants a letter 30 days before the next shipment, and Golden Rule seven days’ notice once the first box has gone out. Noting the next release on the day of joining, with the notice counted back from it, saves a box nobody wanted.