COVID-19 lockdown or no: Palate Club will deliver wine to your door

COVID-19 has turned our lives upside down but we have all tried to take back control, to maintain normalcy. It’s almost an insistence on living, and not merely breathing, to paraphrase the great poet Mary Oliver. We are all searching for a sense of normality and what could be more normal than a glass of wine? Well this novel wine delivery service is here to help.

The rise of internet companies has been unstoppable. Video chat, delivery services, and remote working shows not only how the current work landscape is changing, but also reveals our very human need to communicate. Alongside this is also the increase in online shopping and the need for more delivery services, proving what has long been an accurate observation about how the internet has revolutionized the way we eat, drink, and socialize.

If brick-and-mortar shops haven’t been feeling the squeeze before, then the recent shelter-in-place orders around the nation bring the hard truth: as long as we can be online, we can do almost anything.

Personalized wine selections

Palate Club, a groundbreaking company that now delivers wine to the majority of the United States is a lifeline in an uncertain time. The company offers artisanal wines sourced from the best vineyards and wineries all over the world. With an online wine shop that boasts of almost a hundred labels—personally selected by skilled sommeliers Jennifer Estevez and Aubrey Terrazas, with consultation from wine experts Guillaume Puzo and Aymeric De Clouet in Paris—you are guaranteed quality wines that are ready to be shipped to your doorstep. With prices that range from $17 to $59, these wines are selected and imported with care.

Palate Club’s mission is simple: make it easy for you to find the wines you love. That’s it. So many of the wine shops and wine clubs out there have become easy prey to repetitious marketing tactics, where the wine is expensive yet unexceptional, or highly reviewed but is actually run-of-the-mill. You excitedly open the bottle and, after a few sips, are left with a bad taste in the mouth.

You are not alone in this experience—founder Nicolas Mendiharat himself went through the same thing while in search for the perfect vino. How difficult was it to find a bottle of red or white that suits your taste? As it turns out, it was quite a challenge—mostly because we are always somehow dependent on wine critics and restaurant reviews to find out what we could bring home to the table.

This is where Palate Club’s wine delivery app comes in handy. By utilizing an algorithm comprised of over 200 wine traits plus your personal wine ratings, it is able to come up with your own palate profile. It lists in detail your affinity to tannins, acidity, body, oak, alcohol, sweetness, and fruitiness—all wine traits that are important to know if you want to understand why you prefer certain wines over others.

Think of it as Netflix for wine—the more you drink and rate, the more personalized your wine shipments become. It is guaranteed that you will like every bottle delivered to you, and if not (which rarely happens), Palate Club is more than willing to replace it.

Wine shopping made simple

By starting with a blind tasting kit, or through the initial wine quiz, Palate Club already calculates your data and matches wines to your profile. It now becomes your starting point, on whether you want to shop individual bottles or avail of a personalized and flexible wine subscription.

Your subscription, when delivered, comes in a box with all the labels covered in order to give you a true, bias-free tasting experience. As you rate more bottles, your profile expands to also reveal more information about your main and secondary palate per red, white, sparkling, or rosé wines.

There is no commitment to your membership—you can pause it anytime. Moreover, you can choose your price range, the delivery frequency, and whether you want to receive your favorite again or continue discovering new ones.

What makes Palate Club different from other wine subscriptions is not only its premium wine selection but also its fully integrated artificial intelligence system. Your taste matters—and the app exists to help you truly understand the makeup of your appetite for wine. In other words, you will no longer be bound by mass-market opinions or preconceived notions about what you should like. With data science showing you what you like exactly, you are now empowered by new knowledge, not just about the wine, but of yourself.

The new normal

It is more than likely that we will all continue to adjust to new routines and modified lifestyles while we stay at home to help flatten the curve. While some may view this as a gloomy outlook of the future, we must all remember that the international community as a whole is working together to make sure that we will have a future.

In the meantime, this current way of life is an opportunity for us to forge deeper relationships with our loved ones, and even get to know ourselves a little more in the process. Wine, they say, is history in a bottle. Every sip takes us to the terroir where the grapes are planted, to the winemakers who have their own story to tell, to the vineyards who have stood the test of sun and time. 

Perhaps this is also a chance for us to make new memories—the when and where of our lives.

—

(Featured image by congerdesign from Pixabay)

DISCLAIMER: This article was written by a third party contributor and does not reflect the opinion of Born2Invest, its management, staff or its associates. Please review our disclaimer for more information.

This article may include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements generally are identified by the words “believe,” “project,” “estimate,” “become,” “plan,” “will,” and similar expressions. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks as well as uncertainties, including those discussed in the following cautionary statements and elsewhere in this article and on this site. Although the Company may believe that its expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, the actual results that the Company may achieve may differ materially from any forward-looking statements, which reflect the opinions of the management of the Company only as of the date hereof. Additionally, please make sure to read these important disclosures.