Talk-A-Vino

Wine is an expensive passion, we all know that. Of course, passions and hobbies are generally expensive, and if someone’s passion is Swiss watches or sports cars, that is a totally different level of expense. Nevertheless, if you like to have a good glass of wine every day, your wine budget allocation will quickly add up to some scary amounts.

I don’t remember when I discovered Wines ‘Til Sold Out, commonly referred to as WTSO – at least 8 years ago, or possibly even longer – but it was really an eye-opening experience. When I saw the wines offered at 30%, 50% or even 70% off, with free shipping, my first thought was “is that even real”? First, second, tens orders proved that all is for real – the wines, the prices, the shipping, the service  – all were there, and the space in my cellar started to diminish at a rapid pace – but this is not a subject of today’s post.

Wines ‘Til Sold Out is a fine specimen of what is called a “flash-sale” website – the product (in this case, wine) is offered for sale at a greatly reduced price, until it will be sold out (sometimes in minutes), with a free shipping if you meet minimum required purchase quantities. In case of Wines ‘Til Sold Out, such sales are typically announced through an email, a tweet or an app on the smartphones, and you typically need to react quickly if you want to get it – sometimes you don’t even have time to research the wine online, as by the time you are done, there will be nothing left to buy. And what I really appreciate about Wines ‘Til Sold Out is that their typical offering will keep you under $100 for the total order – I’ve seen a few exceptions, but those are very, very rare.

In addition to having wines offered for the “flash sale”, Wines ‘Til Sold Out also runs a series of so-called Marathons. I’ve seen WTSO experiment a bit with the format of those, but a Marathon is typically a whole day event (starting at 9 AM Eastern and lasting until midnight), where the new wines are offered every 15 minutes or faster (if current offer sells out), all wines at a very good price and sometimes even without minimum quantities to buy (you can read more about WTSO marathons here).

Both regular format and marathons are a great way to get good wines at amazing prices. But everything in this world has two sides, isn’t it? So what is the issue, you ask? Simple. Quite often, the wines are moving simply too fast. I had been in the situations where by the time I decide to buy the wine, it is all gone. Marathons are the worst – I had been clicking like a mad man to get to the “confirm order” button, and by the time I press this button, the sad message would appear to inform me that the wine is no longer available.

If you ever been in a similar situation, I have a good news for you. Wines ‘Til Sold Out recently introduced the new way to buy the wine – Bonus Offers. Once you would come to the Wines ‘Til Sold Out web site, look for the “Bonus Offers” in the top menu – when you will click it, you will be presented with the offering of up to 9 different wines – you can buy any or all, no minimums to get free shipping. The wines will be always grouped by a certain theme – one time it can be wines from Napa Valley, another time it can be Cabernet Sauvignon around the world – there is always an opportunity to be pleasantly surprised.

The new set of Bonus Offers wines will be typically announced via email, and it will last until the wines will be sold out or there will be a time to offer new selection. It is entirely possible that new wines will be added to the current Bonus Offer to replace sold out ones, but this will not be communicated via email, so you pretty much have no choice but to visit the web site and check the Bonus Offers page from time to time. Yesterday, the Bonus Offers page looked like this:

and today Bonus Offer already looks differently – but what else do you expect when the wines are simply getting sold out?

There you have it, my friends. Same great wines at great prices, now with the opportunity to sweat less and simply get what you wnat when you want it. In the world of wine, I’m always happy to drink to that. Cheers!