By Raymond Lamontagne
[These bottles were provided as samples for review purposes.]
I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with wine clubs. This is despite belonging to several. I value freedom of choice. I don’t necessarily love having to select bottles form a constrained number of options as compared to a shop, particularly if the lineup is purely crowd-pleasing and humdrum. On the other hand, a well-curated wine club can be a godsend: one doesn’t have to exert much effort to get a cool haul, particularly if the club is not afraid to offer some libations that tread well off the beaten path. My personal preference is for a roster of old school (albeit perhaps lesser-known) regional offerings coupled with some avant garde, dare I say edgy, selections. Not much to ask, is it? Meet Vinnified.
Vinnified was co-founded by Prince Edward Island-based Andrew Murray and Montreal wine consultant Dave LeBoeuf. Although the website states that the wine club brings “Canada’s best wines” directly to your door, digging a little deeper reveals that the intent is to highlight small-scale producers who identify as farmers rather than manufacturers. One can receive either a 3-pack (for $119) or a 6-pack (for $235) of selected wines once per month, for a fixed price that appears to include shipping charges. You can adjust your monthly subscription at any time to adjust your incoming bottle load. The reach is nationwide. Although Ontario provides the initial focus, the plan is to draw from BC and Nova Scotia producers some time this year. The sleek website is user-friendly and clearly designed to port one quickly and efficiently into the fold. Perhaps the first rule about wine club is that you do not talk (a lot) about wine club. However, some other press materials evoke concepts like “quaint” to describe the wines, which needless to say piques my curiosity. There is a desire to disseminate at least a modicum of wackiness. The first bottle showcased here from my monthly example subscription set provides more than said modicum.
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Close-following Pop & Pour adherents (if such things exist) will have been waiting for this moment for a couple of months. In my last write-up about 
I grew up in the days of monopolized government liquor sales and distribution in Alberta, and I distinctly remember going into the squat brick AGLC store with my parents when they were on the hunt for a new bottle of wine or spirits. While government-controlled retail alcohol is still the norm in much of Canada, Alberta thankfully broke free of its state shackles before I hit adulthood, and now, not really that much later, it is a completely different world, with an ever-increasing number of remarkable producers from across the globe available in our market and very few barriers to introducing even more. Slower to develop have been wine-buying alternatives to the standard visit to a retail shop: online ordering, home delivery, personalized sourcing. I can get almost every work of literature ever created from Amazon Prime within two business days, but our gloriously liberal wine commerce architecture has not yet fully embraced the electronic age and the consumer convenience that can come with it. That’s why I always root for those ventures who come along and try.
cabernetdialectic (Raymond Lamontagne)
Dan Steeves
Peter Vetsch
tylerderksen
pop & pour 