The Sale
Until now, we have never had a sale, and this first was a great success. Duh… Why didn’t we think of it earlier? The logic was always that we were giving customers great value with our normal reorder prices and did not need to offer deeper discounts. But over time, the warehouse floor has become hazardous to anyone who needed to get from one end to the other, occupied as it has been with leftover cases of wine from past shipments. In fact, the sale was so successful, that we will make it a permanent offering. If we get to choose the mix of wines, you can purchase a half case of Artisan Series wines at $49.99 or a full case at $99.99. Shipping is free. You can purchase from the “store” at the website, by calling me, or by sending an email. See the front page of the newsletter for contact information. You will pay $8.33 a bottle for wines, whose normal retail is $16 to $30 a bottle. You can choose reds or whites, Californian or Italian, or a mix unless we are out of one of those categories. You will see that information in the website “store.” These will be wines from selections that we have shipped at least four months earlier and before. You won’t find a better “deal” anywhere.
If you want to order specific wines, reorder prices will remain the same, $66 for a half case plus $19.99 for shipping and $132 for a full case plus $34.99 for shipping. That’s $13.92 per bottle, including shipping, again for wines that normally sell between $16 to $30 a bottle. This too is a great “deal.”
Email Address
We received some complaints though. By the time we put the sale information in the newsletters, we were already sold out of Californian red wines. Some people wanted to know why they were left out of the loop. The first notification of the sale was announced in the monthly email that we send to people in the website database. If you are not getting these emails, you are either a gift recipient or a customer of very long standing, who joined before we constructed the current version of the website. You can sign up by going to www.celebrationswineclub.com, scrolling down to the bottom of the home page, and typing in your email address in the left corner. Usually, we devote the email to announcing the current wines of the month, but we also send news of various kinds. Last month, the email contained notification of the sale.
Tracking Numbers
Another advantage to giving us your email address is that UPS can email your tracking number to you after we generate the label. If you are receiving a gift, the person who gave it to you is getting the tracking number. If you would prefer to receive the information yourself, please call or email your email address. Having that tracking number would give you advance notice of your package arrival date within several days. For more precise information, you could call UPS or me.
If you joined the wine club yourself but are not receiving monthly tracking numbers, once again, you are probably a long time member. You would need to email us and request tracking number notification. This year is the 20th anniversary of Celebrations Wine Club, and 20 years ago, email was cutting edge communication as was the internet. Most people who joined the club in those early years, found us online but then picked up the telephone to order but first to ask what exactly we were doing because even the wine-of-the-month concept was new. Those of us who go back that far live in a state of perpetual amazement at how much a part of our lives this technology has become. Here’s to tech miracles!
What a monthly shipment involved
The club stopped shipping in December of 2019, and nothing described here is available now, but the mechanics are worth recording. Each month’s selections were tasted and chosen well ahead of the shipping date, then held in the warehouse until packing began. A shipment was assembled by tier, packed, labeled and handed to the carrier in batches over several days.
Wine is an awkward thing to send. The cartons are heavy for their size, the contents are fragile, and delivery requires an adult signature, which means someone has to be home. Those three constraints shaped everything about how monthly clubs operated.
Packing, weather and the calendar
Bottles traveled in molded inserts inside corrugated cartons rated for the weight, with each bottle isolated so that glass never touched glass. That packaging is a large material stream in its own right, and the Environmental Protection Agency publishes national data on containers, packaging and recycling covering glass and corrugated board among other materials. Both components of a wine carton are among the more readily recycled household materials.
Weather governed the schedule more than anything else. Summer heat and midwinter freezes both damage wine in transit, so shipments were commonly held until conditions improved, and the affected regions changed week by week. The result was a shipping calendar that bent around the map.
| Season | Main risk | Usual response |
|---|---|---|
| Summer | Heat in trucks and on doorsteps | Hold shipments or use faster service to hot regions |
| Winter | Freezing, which can push corks | Delay shipments to cold regions |
| Late autumn | Holiday volume slowing carriers | Ship earlier in the month |
| Any season | Nobody home to sign | Redirect to a neighbor or a carrier location |
How the technology changed underneath the club
When the club began, the internet was where people found it and the telephone was how they spoke to it. Email arrived next, then tracking numbers generated at the time a label printed, then a website that carried the selections and the archive of past ones. Each step shortened the distance between a decision in the warehouse and a member knowing about it.
What did not change was the tasting. Somebody still had to sit with the samples, take notes and decide, and no amount of software moved that work. The technology only altered how the results were announced.
Records were the quiet half of the operation. Every shipment generated a packing list, a carrier label, a tracking number and an entry against a member account, and the same details had to satisfy state reporting requirements. A club of any size lived or died on the accuracy of that paperwork.
Where the record lives now
The written record is what survives, and it is more detailed than most people expect. Monthly newsletters described the selections, the producers and the regions behind them, and they remain the best account of what the club poured over twenty-five years. Our archive of the monthly newsletters keeps them in their original form.
Readers who want the background rather than the month-by-month narrative usually start elsewhere. The California wine club and Italian wine club pages explain how each side of the program was structured, and the about page covers the history of the operation itself.
Club logistics FAQ
Is the club still shipping wine?
No. Shipping ended in December of 2019, and the site now exists as an archive of the writing and the selections.
Why did wine deliveries need a signature?
Federal and state rules require an adult signature for alcohol deliveries, which is why carriers cannot leave a carton at the door. The requirement applies to the delivery itself rather than to the person named on the label.
Why were shipments held during heat waves?
Because sustained high temperatures cook wine in transit and can push corks. Holding a carton for a few days was far safer than sending it into a heat wave.