Shades of Vino Wine Club Review

An overview of The Wine Concierge

The Wine Concierge is one part of a Washington DC-based wine empire in the making. The owner of this wine store and wine club — Leslie Frelow — was first a wine tour operator for the Maryland wine scene, including vineyard and tasting tours.

When COVID scared us all into staying home for a while back in 2020, the travel industry was hurting. Leslie saw a way to deliver her unique point of view about wine tasting online, and spun The Wine Concierge out into its own company, where her official role is Chief Discovery Officer. That’s a great title because it’s true to the experience you can expect from the Shades of Vino wine club — discovery.

“The Wine Concierge wines are hand-crafted produced by women, BIPOC and culturally diverse winemakers, producers and owners, from boutique vineyards.”

What The Wine Concierge is not

• There is a wine club in Australia called Wine Concierge Club. This is a completely different entity than The Wine Concierge in the US.
  
  Unfortunately some of the Australian company’s unhappy customers leave reviews on the wrong business at Google.
• This is not Total Wine Concierge service.

The Shades of Vino Wine Club

When you start your subscription, you choose your level (Club or Premier) and how many bottles you want to receive each quarter (3, 6, or 12). Pricing starts at $85 for 3 bottles (plus shipping) and goes up depending on how you customize your membership.

Each quarter Leslie curates a selection of 24 wines which make up the basis for all shipments from the Shades of Vino Wine Club.

Offering an unusual level of customization for a small wine club, you can opt for fully-curated shipments, picks they make just for you (like red or white wine only, or more detailed preferences), or you can choose the wines you want to try in each shipment.

This arrangement feels very much like most of my winery wine club memberships and less like an online wine subscription.

Shades of Vino perfect for three kinds of wine subscribers:

• You want them to curate and ship everything
• You want to give them some guidelines and let them pick based on your preferences
• You want to pick every wine you receive

The best value is in the 6-bottle pre-paid memberships with a flat fee of $750 or $1150 per year (four shipments), but prepaying may not be in the budget for you. These pre-paid memberships include shipping and you get two bonus bottles each year.

Shipping is extra for three-bottle subscriptions and you pay the actual shipping cost (which could be as much as $45 if you’re on the West Coast somewhere outside a big city).

Shipping is included on all subscriptions of 6-bottles or more — this is a good reason to upgrade to six-bottle memberships.

There are no sign-up fees or cancellation fees. Your card is charged when the wine is prepared at shipment, not when you sign up.

Shades of Vino membership benefits

One of the most important features for an online wine club is to actually be able to manage your membership online and to get timely notifications. Shades of Vino sends email notices to let you know which wines have been selected and when your card will be charged, giving you the chance to make changes/additions, or even cancel ahead of the next shipment.

As noted earlier, this wine club feels like a winery wine club, and the membership benefits echo that approach. Members enjoy:

• 15% off all non-club purchases, regardless of membership level
• A monthly virtual meetup
• Exclusive member events in person (in and around DC)
• A donation is made to The Black Winemakers Scholarship Fund with every purchase
• The tasting booklet is handy reference with all of the salient details and I especially appreciate the notes on Body/Acidity/Sweetness/Fruit/Tannin which make it easier to know how to pair the wines.

My biggest critique of this wine club is that there isn’t more emphasis on telling the stories of the women and BIPOC producers and winemakers behind the wine. The tasting booklet crams a lot of important information into a short paragraph, but given that the main reason to join this club is to support BIPOC and culturally diverse wineries, I want more storytelling about these intrepid souls.

Shades of Vino wine review

I received one shipment of three bottles of wine from the Shades of Vino club in August 2024. Here are my wine reviews, but the key takeaways were:

1. I liked two out of three of them, but Mitch wasn’t a fan of any of them
2. None of the vintages I received are the ones in the printed booklet.

I asked Leslie about this latter point and this was her response, “Since we work with boutique and limited stock vineyard [sic], they may run out the initial vintage we requested. The book is printed prior to us receiving the wines sometimes. Vineyard [sic] will substitute vintages. It doesn’t happen frequently, except for your shipment (of course).”

Why does this matter enough for me to say something? Some vintages are better than others. Unlike mass production wines which aim to deliver the same taste each year, most small producers are purposefully at the whim of how the climate impacted their vineyards, resulting in different wines from year to year, even from the same grapes in the same vineyard.

For those of us who are into small producers, this is part of the fun and fascination of wine. But if you’re new to wine and you rely on the tasting notes verbatim, you might find that last year’s wine doesn’t taste like this year’s tasting notes say it should.

I typically do a pricing spot check of other wines sold by the companies I review, in addition to the one I received. In this case I found that most of the wines are priced at retail or above, though some are below. Since the focus here isn’t on deals or value-based pricing, it’s not a dealbreaker, but something you should know.

Who should join Shades of Vino?

I don’t think the Shades of Vino Wine Club is right for everyone, but it can be right for anyone ready for a wine adventure.

It’s especially grand for people who are new to wine and want a professional coach to help select wines based on what they like and don’t like (almost like a personal sommelier).

It’s also just right for anyone who would prefer to drink wine made by producers who are BIPOC or “culturally diverse.”

If you’re the kind of wine drinker who prefers familiar grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, and the styles of wine enjoyed by many American wine lovers, I’d consider joining something like Naked Wines or Firstleaf instead.

Is Shades of Vino a good gift?

While The Wine Concierge doesn’t explicitly offer gift memberships, you can prepay for a year’s long subscription (still shipped quarterly).

Some important details about giving a Shades of Vino membership:

• The bottles don’t arrive with a gift presentation like wrapping paper
• The recipient will get both an email and a note card in the first shipment
• You can specify when the recipient is notified of the gift

How does Shades of Vino compare to similar wine subscriptions?

When I think about what other wine clubs you should consider if you’re thinking about Shades of Vino, three come to mind.

Vero Vino
Another small wine club managed by a woman on a mission, Vero Vino offers natural wine imported from (mostly) Italy. These aren’t natty wines, but they embody the mission that natural wine proponents espouse — land stewardship, fair labor practices, and no additives.

MYSA
MYSA is also a small natural wine club owned by a woman sommelier, and she carries a broad array of natural wines from Classic to Funky.

Plonk
Yet another (much older) small wine club owned by a woman sommelier, the proprietor here has a reputation for an exceptional palate — once named a “30 Under 30” by Wine Enthusiast magazine. Her selection leans natural, but all wines are organic or biodynamic. Expect oddball grapes from hidden gem wine regions all over the world.

Why trust this review

I’m not a certified wine expert or sommelier, but I have a lot of experience drinking wines from around the world (thanks to the 1000+ of bottles I’ve consumed from all of the wine clubs I review) and quite a bit of experience drinking California wine (I live within driving distance of, and frequently go wine tasting in, California’s Central Coast wine regions).

I am qualified to evaluate the wines received from (and any other wine club) based on their relative quality and price for the grapes and regions presented. And it’s not just me saying so.

I get consistent feedback from the wine clubs I work with that my readers stay members longer than any other online source. This is because I tell you everything you need to know before you join, and I try to be as honest and unbiased as possible (but I do have biases as I am not a machine). I’m not just pushing the best introductory offer or the company which pays me the most.

That’s another important point — as I state clearly on every page on the site where there are links to wine clubs, I get paid a commission fee if you join a wine club based on my recommendations. The opinions in my reviews are 100% mine and mine alone and I do not accept payment for ratings.

There are more clubs worth joining than you’ll find on my site.

• I’m relatively certain Winestyr, Fat Cork, and SommSelect are awesome, but they don’t want or need the exposure that I offer. I mention them when relevant, but I haven’t reviewed them.
• There are some other wine clubs who are not on my site because they treat their business partners poorly. I leave them off the site entirely because I can’t be sure how well they look after their customers.

The bottom line: after 13+ years trying 1000+ of bottles from 100+ different wine clubs, I know what it means to be a wine club worth joining.

Want to know more about me and my ratings? Learn more about why my reviews are trustworthy, my review process, and my wine background — all in gory detail.