Wine Spectator is a website that caters to the wine lovers of the world
Written: Feb 02 '04
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Not only an online complement to the Wine Spectator magazine, the Wine Spectator website is, as they say, one of the most comprehensive wine sites on the entire Internet.
Wine Spectator is a website that caters to the wine lovers of the world. Most of the sites features are available to anyone, however, some features, such as the forums or full online versions of the magazine are available only to members.
The Details
Wine Spectator is a three tiered website, with general information and services provided to anonymous users. Free registered users can use areas like the forums, but do not have access to the full content of the Wine Spectator magazine or to the weekly Wine Spectator news. Paid registered users have full access to the entire site, which includes all the content of the published magazine and access to the weekly news and stories in Wine Spectator Weekly.
A full access 3-month trial subscription to the site will cost you $19.95, a one year subscription will cost $49.95 and a 2-year subscription for the website will cost you $79.95.
The registration (for both free and paid users) is easy and pain free. Both the free and paid users sign up on the same form, however the paid users are also required to enter credit card information for the billing.
What do you get with membership?
$49.95 a year is a lot of money to slap down for a membership to a website, so what do you get when you become a paid member of Wine Spectator?
Wine Spectator Weekly is an online weekly newsletter from the editors of Wine Spectator magazine available only to paid members. This newsletter gives you advance reviews of at least 20 wines an issue.
In addition to Wine Spectator Weekly, paid registered users have access to the full content of each issue of Wine Spectator magazine. This in of itself pays for the online subscription price, as a 1-year subscription to the magazine will cost you the same $49.95. So if you don’t mind reading the magazine online, you make out in this deal.
For both free and paid members, there are many other sections of information available on the website that include: Wine Ratings, Daily Wine News; The Forums (where you can interact with other users); Dining; Travel; Wine Basics; and Collecting to just name a few of the areas that you can explore.
There’s also a gift shop that is available to all users, where you can purchase Wine Spectator related merchandise and/or wine related merchandise.
Do I want to sign up and do I want to pay for it?
It depends on what you are looking for. If you want the barest information on wines, then anonymous users of the site can probably be quite happy. However, if you want to explore further, then becoming a free registered user of the site is helpful and gives you access to many more sections and features and even gives you the opportunity to interact with other wine lovers in the forums. If you want the full access to the site, including Wine Spectator Weekly and the full online version of Wine Spectator magazine, then the paid subscription is the way to go.
While the paid registration is quite high for the average website, Wine Spectator does offer you full online access to Wine Spectator magazine, which of in itself is a $49.95 value if you don’t mind reading the magazine online, instead of in the paper version. In addition, the ability to fully browse past magazine issues and to get the Wine Spectator Weekly email are useful advantages to the full paid membership.
My Final Thoughts
I’ll admit it, I’m a free registered member and I’m happy that way. However, the website, in addition to the Wine Spectator magazines that I pick up now and then are useful and are interesting. Instead of having to guess about various wines and not understand what wine goes with what food, I can just hop online to Wine Spectator, take a quick look and within minutes, I’ve got a good idea of what to do. Now that’s what I consider to be helpful.
So if you’re just looking for more information on wine, go with the free registration, but if you are a wine aficionado who just can’t get enough of the wine world, then pay the registration costs, become a full member of Wine Spectator and start enjoy all that it has to offer you.
An Aside - Epinions considers this a merchant website - so I had to input answers the questions on ordering and getting the order.
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