What You Need to Know About The Roscioli Italian Wine Club

A wine subscription has the potential to be one of the most rewarding or horrific experiences, so how do you know if and which one you should join? First of all, ask yourself why you’re interested in wine.

A wine club delivers a selection of wine usually monthly, quarterly or semi-annually, but when you find a great club, you’ll also find that it has the ability to deliver an experience alongside which can exponentially increase the value and pleasure of your subscription.  

These days, nearly everyone around the world from WSJ, Eater, NPR, every winery, every restaurant, sommelier, etc has a wine club, and some of which are extremely disappointing, resulting in dumped bottles hardly worthy of even cooking with. 

Having personally known that some wineries give their unsold (aka undesired) wines to their members, and other mass market wine clubs who buy up huge quantities of cheap wine to ‘private label’ which basically means they’ll slap a clever, comical label on it which will help disguise what’s really inside and that they’ll have full control over the market price since you cannot reference the winemaker or prices online - it means that you need to be vigilant when selecting a subscription service.  

Our expert tips on how to find the best wine club subscription:

• Make sure it’s curated by experts in their field who work with wine, taste it, or visit wineries daily.  Some merely taste wines which reps bring them and others travel and spend copious amounts with winemakers, learning and hunting for the best wines available.

• Find one that allows you to discover new grapes and to be surprised.  We all get stuck in our own rut sometimes of buying the same wine over and over.

• Wine has no real value, it comes down to what you value.  Look for one which has the chance to enrich you on deeper levels even after it’s been consumed.  Wine has the ability to be a connector or vehicle to history, culture, nature, travel, humans and deeper connections.  When you care about this, quality wine comes naturally.

• Decide if you just want to receive wine or if you want to feel like part of a true community.  Some online wine clubs are mere transactional experiences - you pay, and you receive wine, with little interaction from humans.  Some come with local perks like getting free tastings and member preview and pick up parties, where you can connect with people and a community.

• Look for a wine club who can curate hard-to-find, boutique production wines which often never get exported to the US from small families for a special and more authentic experience. These wines are also more often organic, biodynamic and more natural.

• Don’t let price be the only reason you join a wine club, otherwise you have a world of cheap supermarket wines at your disposal.    

 

The Roscioli Wine Club

Some of you will wonder about the name Roscioli. 

For those of you who don’t know Roscioli, it is a staple name in the center of Rome, long associated with the curation of the best artisanal Italian products, with the Salumeria Roscioli boasting 350 artisan cheeses, 150 cured meats, and some 3,000 wine labels in their cellars - which inspired Anthony Bourdain to do a filming with us.  

Naturally when we started our wine club, the most important element would be to recreate the experience which put us at the top position of TripAdvisor - the wine tasting dinner at Rimessa Roscioli - where your palate gets to enjoy 8 wines paired with meats, cheeses, pasta and more with a sommelier explaining the regions, wines, food pairings and story of the wine.

The idea would be to find similar natural and artisan wines which don’t get exported to the USA, and to bring our members as close to Italy’s and winemakers as possible, short of hopping on a plane and coming with us.  

To date, we have visited over 600 vineyards in Italy, always taking a video of the winemaker and vineyards for our members, so that they can deeply get in touch with the story behind the wine, who made it, and to see the territory which birthed it. 

Knowing where a wine comes from enhances the tasting experience.  Period.  

And to make this as easy as possible, we developed the idea to put a private back label on all the wines with an easy to scan QR code which gives you:

• A video of the winemaker (with full English subtitles)

• A video of the founders, Alessandro or Lindsay, speaking about their personal experience with the wine.

• The grape

• Region and map of where it comes from

• Ideal drinking window

• The story and how it was made

• Pairing ideas and local recipes

How it works:

 

• First, select your tier, starting from 199€ per six bottles

• Then, choose between a mixed selection, featuring whites, reds and sparkling wine, or a red wine only subscription (or opt for both, and receive a multi-box discount!)

 

Payment information

 

• You'll pay four equal payments per year for your subscription.

• The first will be charged when you join our club and the second just before your first delivery

• Then you'll join our regular payment schedule - payments are charged on Feb 15 and March 15 for Spring deliveries and August 15 and Sept 15 for Fall deliveries

• Prices are fixed for the duration of your membership - we'll never raise the cost of your membership for as long as you stay a member.

 

Delivery information

 

• We offer free shipping to all 50 US states and the whole EU. We also ship to most other countries globally.

• You’ll receive 24 bottles per year on a standard membership - a mix of sparkling, red and white wines, or select reds only.

• We'll send you 12 bottles per shipment/box with one delivery in Spring and and another in the Fall. (2 payments are made per shipment)

We created this custom delivery and shipping schedule for a few reasons:

• Not delivering every month, or even quarterly means that our team has the time to curate the best wine subscription collections possible by scouting Italy for the best, most hidden wines.

• It gives us ample time to prepare the tasting notes and other bonus materials all members receive as part of their wine subscription. We provide so much information on our wines but it takes time to prepare.

• We break our payments into two per shipment to spread the costs and send 12 wines together to be able to provide free shipping.

Note that we pause shipping during the hot summer months to ensure your wine is not damaged by the heat during transit. For this, we cannot ship monthly or quarterly to ensure the quality.

 

Just a few more things for you to know:

 

• You can also make your subscription a gift (or opt for a one-time six bottle or 12 bottle delivery to try us out before joining on a membership)

• All wines delivered come with a quality guarantee - in the rare instance a bottle isn't right when it's opened, we'll immediately replace it or refund you.

 

What makes the Roscioli Wine Club the best wine subscription for you?

 

• Our wines are always organic (sometimes biodynamic) and extremely low in sulfites. While natural wine has no true definition, the wines will always be more 'natural' without any chemicals or additives.

• Every wine comes from super boutique productions who produce a limited number of bottles, and are nearly impossible to find outside Italy - some exclusive to the Roscioli Wine Club only.

• Membership also includes a free wine tasting dinner (sommelier hosted) at Rimessa Roscioli when in Rome

• You can easily order more wines you enjoyed from the delivery

• Our Wine Club 1 and Wine Club 2 collections come with a full wine portfolio, featuring profiles on each bottle with bonus content including a video about the winemaker and recommended food pairings

• Our premium Collector's and Legend's levels include tailored and exclusive tasting notes direct from our founders

If that wasn't enough...

We’re currently helping to save old vineyards from becoming abandoned by purchasing small vineyards in collaboration with our network of winemakers, some of which will have a small home on the property, for our members to visit, learn from and stay at (for free, nearly) when here in Italy. 

And we’ll be opening up in New York in the spring of 2023 (shhhh…) and members will have access to our casual wine lessons, wine club preview parties and more services…

This wine subscription will be the best decision you’ve ever made.  

Not ready to commit to a wine subscription?

That's OK! With our wine club you can order a one-time 6 bottle or 12 bottle shipment from any of our subscription services and options.

Our single shipments still offer access to a lot of the benefits that full membership includes, such as the Wine Portfolio featuring recommended food pairings and other bonus info.

 

Care about the environment and sustainability? 

Recently we partnered with our shipper to send our first 1,000 bottles to the USA via sailboat, meaning extremely low carbon emissions, and nearly zero compared with cargo ships or airplanes. 

This also helps our winemakers who care deeply about respecting the environment to align their values in the vineyard with shipping their wines across the Atlantic. 

We never use styrofoam for shipping and our shipper is currently developing and patenting a totally biodegradable interior for the wines made from popcorn. 

Sustainability for us entails the sustainability of a community, and in keeping land in the locals' hands who respect the territory and ensure its long term viability for future generations.

There is no wine club in the world which goes to these lengths to help you discover, delivery by delivery, the nearly 1,800 grape varietals we have in Italy, excavating through the 150,000 licensed winemakers we have in Italy to find you the most unique, sincere, and hard to find expressions of the immense terroir we have which gave Italy the name of Enotria, or Land of Wine, by the Greeks. 

Italy is immense and infinite, and we hope to bring you the most authentic Italian wine club subscription, actually the best wine club subscription period, no matter where you are!

 

Meet the founders

Alessandro Pepe

One hundred percent Italian, Alessandro has been involved with Italian wine for over 20 years working as the cellar manager for Roscioli and beside mentor Maurizio Paparello (one of Italy’s most lauded Master Sommeliers) for years before starting Rimessa Roscioli where he has now hosted upwards of 10,000 wine tastings over the decades with not only Italian, but some of the most expensive and sought after wines of the world. 

With his mother being an anthropologist and his father a philosopher, he has always seen wine from a different perspective than your typical sommelier, and he brings Dionysian approach to appreciating wine instead of the typical heavy (and often boring) academic approach.

Lindsay Gabbard

American born and raised and passionate about wine since she was 19 years old, arrived to Italy 7 years ago when she decided to leave the books behind get a more holistic and intimate experience with wine, taking a 3 month sabbatical to travel the main wine regions of Spain, France and Italy. 

Upon attending a tasting at Rimessa Roscioli and meeting Alessandro, you could say it was a sort of life changing moment, spurring a U-turn to come back and work alongside him to expand and develop the best wine club experience together blending the best of both Alessandro’s and Lindsay’s strengths.   

"It isn't necessary to be a master sommelier or to be an expert in blind tasting to have a good palate. A great palate is obtained from tasting different wines from various regions and grapes to understand and appreciate differences."

In Conclusion...

A wine club subscription can be an excellent decision but be sure to look for quality and premium wines which are made in small quantities, and for a club which offers more personal services than just shipped wine.

Remember that wine is a natural and living product, but when made by big companies, it is often altered with chemicals and processes that make it more similar to Coca-cola.

Don't worry about the frequency, but instead about the quality. And monthly shipping can be risky in the summer if ice is not used.

Wine can be a vehicle to enriching your knowledge about history, culture, and the environment. Choose a wine club subscription which supports this journey.