Best Uncorked.com Alternatives

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Uncorked.com is a pretty well-known company that offers somewhat exclusive wine with a loyalty program that helps you earn points. You can purchase individual bottles or boxes of whatever size and then pay for shipping to your home or business. Each dollar you spend earns you points toward a future purchase. However, I found a lot of issues with them, including:

  1. A pretty limited selection
  2. High shipping costs
  3. High product costs
  4. No monthly subscription options
  5. No member discounts
  6. No real education to go with their wines

So I started looking for Uncorked.com alternatives that helped me tackle each of these issues, and here is what I have found.

  • If you want free shipping, go with Firstleaf. 
  • If you want discounted costs as a member, try NakedWines.
  • If you want education and pairing notes with your wine, use Vivino.
  • If you want wine subscriptions, try Splash Wines. 
  • If you want better quality (without the cost), go with Wine Insiders.

Let’s take a closer look.

Best Uncorked.com Alternative for Shipping: Firstleaf

Uncorked.com Alternatives

Uncorked.com used to offer a flat rate shipping option for all of the orders you placed: $9.95. In the fine print of their website though, they no longer offer flat rate shipping because of increased freight costs. 

According to their FAQs, the company tried to absorb the costs of increased shipping and import taxes, but now, instead of increasing the cost of a flat rate, they’ve done away with it entirely. So no matter how many bottles you buy or whether you pay with the points you have accumulated or not, you also have to pay for shipping.

That shipping will vary depending on where you are shipping to and how many bottles you order. 

That’s one of the reasons I started looking for alts; I take umbrage with companies that offer really attractive benefits like cheap flat rate shipping, and then instead of just scaling those costs and sharing them with the customer, they immediately change it with no warning.

Firstleaf is a good alternative if you are frustrated with the sudden increase in shipping costs from Uncorked.com like I was. 

Why Firstleaf:

  • Free shipping on the first six bottles for new members
  • Free shipping for online orders of six or more bottles for existing members

Best Uncorked.com Alternative for Discounted Costs: Naked Wines

naked wines site

Uncorked.com doesn’t offer a monthly subscription program where, for example, you get six bottles delivered to your house every month or one high quality bottle delivered every quarter. Instead they have a loyalty program where you accumulate points for every dollar you spend, and those points can be put toward the cost of wine in the future. In fact, signing up gives you 500 points just to start, and every dollar you spend earns you 10 points thereafter.

However, you don’t get any types of discounts no matter how long you stay with the company or how many orders you place.

So, if you want a company that rewards you with such discounts, Naked Wines is a good alternative.

They have a monthly cost, but unlike some of the other wine subscriptions out there, that monthly cost doesn’t actually purchase any bottles of wine. Rather, that flat fee (around $50 per month) is what you pay to maintain your membership. 

The monthly cost gets credited toward your account and is applied to any future purchases. Moreover, simply being a member gives you access to discounted rates.

For example:

I pay $40 for one month of membership, but I don’t buy any wine that month. The second month of my membership, I now have $80 credited to my account. I want to buy some bottles of Stefano di Blasi IGT tre Venezie 2024 from Veneto. Normally, they are $17.99, but as a member, they only cost me $12.99 per bottle. So if I want to buy six bottles, that’s almost $80, which means I will likely be paying very little out of pocket. 

Why Naked Wines:

  • Prices are flat monthly memberships, not associated with a specific number of bottles, which is credited toward your next purchases
  • Membership gives you discounts on wines, up to 60% off 
  • You can work with an independent winemaker or set up a taster profile and have wines recommended based on your preferences 

Best Uncorked.com Alternative for Personalized Recommendations: Vivino

vivino site wines

I have run into so many people, even those who work in smaller wine industries like the Finger Lakes in central New York, who get involved in the business with no background or understanding of wine. 

When I was younger, I used to think that some standoffish attitudes were arrogance, and now I realize it’s actually ignorance. I have met some wonderful people who just genuinely don’t know much about wine. They get started in the industry taking a basic job doing things like wine tastings, and their training is about 10 minutes long. It’s really not their fault.

That’s why I am drawn to a wine club that provides some education for users and makes it easy to build that repertoire; not just of wine knowledge, but of wine and food pairing too.

Vivino has just that; an extensive database and an easy way to capture wine by scanning the label and then ordering it. If you go out for the night, you can take a picture of a restaurant wine list and immediately see reviews and recommendations associated with that wine.

Why Vivino:

  • Snap a photo of a wine bottle label or a wine list at a restaurant and find info from the website with food pairings and reviews
  • Reviews for over 15 million wines
  • Get AI-driven results based on your taste profile

Best Uncorked.com Alternative for Wine Subscriptions: Splash Wines

Uncorked.com doesn’t really hit it out of the park when it comes to subscriptions. Their website focuses more on offering a specialized subset of wines to those who want to pay for wine by the bottle. The company offers a point-based club system where you earn points for every dollar you spend, and eventually you can put those points toward the cost of wine.

But they don’t really have a good type of monthly subscription where curated bottles are sent to your home every month or every quarter.

Splash Wines, however, does. You can choose a subscription that’s based on a red, white, or mixed case, and if you prefer, you can also pay extra for a curated case that comes from top vineyards around the world. 

What’s more, their subscription gives you what’s called the “Gotta Love It Guarantee” meaning, if you don’t like a bottle, you don’t have to pay for it. Instead, you get credited that amount, and it can go toward a different bottle.

You can set up your deliveries to be monthly, every two months, or quarterly. You can also change that choice at any time, which I appreciate. There are certain months where I might be traveling a lot for work, or we go out a lot for other events and I’m not drinking as much at home, so I don’t necessarily need another box if I haven’t even gotten through my previous one. Conversely, there are months where I know I’m going to have a lot of company, and I want to be able to set up multiple deliveries on a monthly basis. 

Why Splash Wines:

  • Good discounts on multiple bottles
  • You can choose 6 or 15 bottles per delivery, monthly, twice per month, or quarterly 
  • Curate collections with basic, inexpensive wines or higher quality vineyard or cellar packages
  • Free shipping for curated boxes 

Best Uncorked.com Alternative for Range of Quality Wines: Wine Insiders

wine insiders

While Uncorked.com claims to have lots of unique offerings, I haven’t been very impressed, particularly with the collection of reds. 

I grew up in the Stellenbosch area of South Africa and then moved to Napa Valley, after which I worked in Bordeaux, so it’s safe to say that I have some experience with good quality red wines. It’s the “Napa Valley” wines that are often an issue for me; lots of newer vineyards pretending they are associated or close to Napa, but really, they come from the Central Valley or from areas down south, like Temecula. A lot of what Uncorked.com offered fell under that same type of deceptive category, in my opinion. 

That said, I really like Wine Insiders for their range of offerings. They have an extensive collection from California, Argentina, Chile, France, Italy, Spain, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and even some unique regions like Hungary. 

I was very impressed with their thousands of 5-star reviews, legendary brand additions like Cameron Hughes Wine to the Full Glass family, as well as personalized recommendations, diverse selection, and flexible purchase options. 

The wine is affordable, with current ranges from under $10 to $35.99, unlike Uncorked.com, which was on average $75 or higher. A big part of that comes from the fact that they don’t have a middleman, just like Naked Wines doesn’t have a middleman. That skips the markup and still gives you access to really impressive wine.

It also got to me quickly; 2-3 days for shipping. Yes, yes, and yes. 

Why Wine Insiders:

  • Around 250 different selections of reds, over 160 selections of whites, and dozens of Rosé and sparkling wine options
  • 2-3 day shipping
  • No middleman, so prices average $20, with options below $10
  • Niche varietals like Carménère, Gruner Veltliner, Pinotage
  • Sustainable options like Rolle and Roussanne 

Summing Up

There are plenty of reasons why you might want to find a platform other than uncorked.com. If one of them is free shipping, go with Firstleaf. If instead, you want discounted prices without a middleman, try NakedWines or Wine Insiders. For high quality and discounted prices, stick with Wine Insiders.

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