Wine clubs: should your winery run one?

Ask around the wine industry and you’ll hear that a wine club is the smartest thing a winery can do. You’ll also hear that clubs are a churn-ridden headache that quietly bleed members. Both are true — and which one you end up with comes down to a few decisions made early.

Here’s a plain-English guide to whether your winery should run a wine club, what one actually does for the business, and how to start without building something you’ll regret.

What a wine club actually is

Strip away the branding and a wine club is one simple promise: members agree to receive wine from you on a regular basis — say three or four times a year — and in return they get first access, member pricing, and a closer relationship with your label.

For the winery, that turns a lumpy, unpredictable sales calendar into something closer to a steady book of recurring revenue. Instead of chasing every sale from scratch, you start each release with a group of people who have already said yes.

Why clubs matter more than ever

The numbers have shifted hard in the club’s favour. Across the industry, wine clubs now make up around 39% of all direct-to-consumer sales — they overtook tasting-room revenue a few years ago and the gap has only widened since. For a lot of wineries, a single membership channel now drives more than a quarter of total revenue.

That matters even more in a soft market. Direct-to-consumer shipments fell about 15% by volume in 2025, the steepest drop in over a decade. When walk-in traffic and one-off orders wobble, the wineries that hold steady are the ones with a base of members who keep buying regardless. A club is, in plain terms, the most reliable revenue a winery can build.

The catch nobody mentions

Here’s the part the “every winery needs a club” crowd skips: clubs are leaky.

Industry-wide, nearly 40% of new members cancel within their first year, and average member tenure has slipped from 36 months to about 30. Worse, almost half of wineries don’t track their churn at all — so they’re losing members without knowing how fast.

The most common reason people give for leaving is “better deals elsewhere.” Read that closely and it’s not really about price. It’s that the club stopped feeling special — too many shipments they didn’t choose, wines they didn’t want, and no easy way to adjust. A club built as a glorified mailing list churns. A club built as a genuine membership keeps people for years.

This is the whole game: a wine club is only as good as the experience behind it. Which is exactly where the website comes in.

What makes a club worth running

The clubs that hold their members tend to share a few things, and most of them are software decisions, not marketing ones:

Member control. Letting members skip, swap, or pause a shipment is the single biggest retention lever there is. Wineries that let members customise what they receive see far fewer first-year cancellations — people stay when they feel in control, and leave when they feel locked in.
Tiers that mean something. A simple “good / better / best” structure lets casual fans and superfans both find a level that fits, instead of one rigid plan that suits no one perfectly.
A real members’ area. Somewhere members can log in, manage their plan, update a card, and see what’s coming — without emailing you. Self-serve isn’t lazy; it’s what keeps members from churning out of friction.
Allocations done properly. For limited or sought-after releases, members expect first dibs handled fairly and automatically — not a frantic email blast.

None of this is exotic. But it is real software, and it’s the difference between a club that compounds and one that quietly drains.

So — should your winery run one?

A wine club is probably worth it if:

You already have people who buy from you more than once — a club formalises a relationship that’s already there.
You make enough wine, often enough, to fulfil regular shipments without straining stock.
You’re willing to treat it as an ongoing relationship, not a set-and-forget billing system.

It’s probably premature if you’re still finding your direct-to-consumer feet. In that case, get the storefront converting first, then layer the club on once there’s a steady stream of repeat buyers to convert into members. We walked through that staged approach — storefront first, club second, trade portal last — in how much a winery website costs, and a club almost always earns its place as step two.

How we’d build it

When we build a club for a winery, it’s not a plugin bolted onto a brochure site. The Wine Club Engine is the membership layer of the store: tiered memberships, recurring billing, a proper members’ area, club-only releases, and self-serve so people can skip, swap or pause without ever needing to reach you. It sits on top of the storefront so direct sales and membership run on one platform, not two systems duct-taped together.

We did exactly this for Millésimes, bringing a fine-wine storefront, a B2B trade portal and a VIP members’ area onto a single platform — the membership running alongside everything else rather than off to the side.

As a guide, a storefront with a club built in typically lands around A$12,000–20,000; you can see how that fits the bigger picture on our pricing page. For most wineries with a loyal following, it’s the fastest part of the site to pay for itself.

The takeaway

Should your winery run a wine club? If you’ve got repeat buyers and the wine to back it, almost certainly yes — it’s the most dependable revenue in the business, and never more valuable than when the wider market is soft. Just build it as a real membership, with the control and experience that keep people for years, not a billing system that churns them out in twelve months.

If you want to know whether a club makes sense for your winery specifically, the Pour-Over Audit is a free, no-obligation look at your current store and the highest-impact things we’d change — including whether a club is your next best move.

FAQ

Is a wine club worth it for a small winery?

Often, yes — a club doesn’t need to be big to be worthwhile. If you have even a modest group of repeat customers, formalising that into a membership creates predictable, recurring revenue. The key is matching shipment frequency and volume to what you can comfortably fulfil.

How much does it cost to set up a wine club?

Building a club into your store typically runs around A$12,000–20,000 AUD, depending on the tiers, billing and allocation logic you need. See our pricing page for how that sits next to a basic storefront and a full trade build.

Why do wine club members cancel?

The most-cited reason is “better deals elsewhere,” but underneath that is usually a club that stopped feeling worth it — shipments members didn’t choose and couldn’t easily adjust. Letting members skip, swap and customise their shipments is the most effective way to keep them.

Should I start with a wine club or a storefront?

Almost always the storefront first. Get direct sales converting, then convert those repeat buyers into members. A club works best when it’s built on top of a store that’s already selling, not in place of one.