August Winc Review

Hey hey hey! I'm back with another Winc Wine review for the August wines that I got. If you have no idea what Winc is, here's a post of my full review over Winc. The TL;DR is that it's a subscription box where you get 4 bottles of wine each month. 

Since getting my first box, Ryan and I have become huge fans and tell everyone about it! When I was picking my wine up from my apartment's mail room (update from last month, I found out that everyone in the office is over 21 so I don't have FedEx hold it anymore) the manager and I got to talking because she saw that the box said Winc. I basically sat there for like 10 minutes raving about why I love it so much. And then Ryan and I went to his cousin's wedding in Branson and we went to a winery there and the whole time Ryan was comparing the wines we were tasting with the Winc wines. And then after the winery tour he spent the whole drive telling his sister that she should sign up for Winc.

What I got

The first month I just let Winc send me whatever wines they wanted. But for this month, I got so excited while I was on the Winc app rating wines that I went ahead and just picked out 4 bottles that I wanted. A heads up, some of the wines I chose were more expensive so this month did exceed the $30 but I thought it was worth it and loved all of the wines! One thing that I realized as I unboxed the wines is that they all matched really well so I thought that was pretty cool. One thing that I was really into this month is that this Winc Journal came with wine and ice cream pairings! 

And again I got an email with food pairings for each of the wines right ahead of when the wines arrived. Every time I get this email, I get so excited for all of the Wine Wednesdays to come! I'm signed up to get the Winc notifications and I got so excited adding their number to my phone that I changed the picture for the contact information to a bitmoji and now it's literally perfect hahaha.

Week one - Field Theory Albariño

This is one of the wines that I paid extra for but it was so worth it! I lived in Spain for 5 months and the only wine choices they have are red or white. That's it. All the time I'd order the white wine and try to ask them what kind of white wine it was and the server would just tell me that it's white wine. It wasn't until I was at a local winery doing a wine testing that I tried Albariño and instantly recognized it as the wine that I was getting in Seville. So of course when I saw that Winc offered albariño I had to get it!

The meal that was paired with it was scallops but both me and Ryan aren't scallops fans so I just substituted it with boiled shrimp. Another substitution that I made is that doubled the amount of radishes because after the last month we realized that we both really like these. This had a sauce that was just like the sauce from the Thai salad we had in July with our riesling and I loved it. 

You can get the recipe here!

Let me warn you about this wine though, it is strong! It's 14% and normally I can hold my wine just fine but after only two decent sized glasses I was feeling this wine. Normally between Ryan and I we will finish the bottle that night, but with this bottle we left like 1/4 of it for the next day. This actually made me really happy because a few nights later I had myself a little Spain night and finished the bottle off with some manchego cheese drizzled in olive oil. Another warning with this wine is that the cork is really long so definitely make sure you use a hand corkscrew instead of an electric one and go really slow or else you'll end up just drilling a hole into the cork and then you'll be screwed.

Week two - Funk Zone White Blend

The meal that was suggested with this wine was sweet potatoes, but I hate potatoes so we definitely did not cook that. You can get the recipe here if sweet potatoes are your thing. Instead, we went to a BYOB Italian restaurant here in town and had that instead. 

Our waiter was complimenting us as he opened it because it's such a pretty bottle and the cork is really cool. So of course we went on and talked his ear off about how much we've loved getting the Winc wines. 

I got shrimp alfredo and Ryan got a chicken parmesan sub and we both thought the wine went great with that. But another warning, this bottle also was 14% and when we stood up after dinner we both definitely felt it. 

Week three - Brethren of the Road Gewürztraminer

Ok so to be honest I really just got this wine because I have never heard of this wine so I was really intrigued by it. But it was my second favorite wine so far! It was really like and easy to sit and sip on.

The recipe that paired with this wine was another scallop one that we replaced with shrimp. But it turned out really good! It was another fresh salad that really just reminded me that it's still summer (even though it feels like summer's over with school starting). We also used my little George Foreman since my apartment doesn't allow grills, so the grapefruit definitely cooked faster than the recipe said it would. I also learned how to juice a grapefruit thanks to this recipe so that was definitely a first.

This was one of Ryan's favorite meals because the sauce tasted amazing with the shrimp. You can get the recipe here.

Week four - Vinyasa Muscat Canelli

This was another wine that I knew I'd love before I even tried it because I love my moscato! But this meal ended up being both mine and Ryan's least favorite meal that we've tried so far, but that was partly my fault. You know the chips and salsa you get at a TexMex restaurant? Yeah that salsa is too spicy for me. So when this recipe included a bunch of spicy ingredients and said to feel the BURN in all caps, I was like nope, nope, nope, nope hard pass. 

So I ended up cutting out half of the ingredients so that my mouth wouldn't be on fire. The end result was basically a brothy spaghetti. The broth and noodles were good but the meat was really bland. Also we had wayyy too much noodles because Ryan is a pasta-holic. To make up for my bad cooking, we decided to just finish off the bottle right then and get a little drunk. This was a good backup plan! 

If you can handle spicy foods, then you can get the recipe here.

Wino favorites 

As you might've noticed throughout my posts over the years, I love wine. I'm talking for my senior queen night in my sorority, my twin and my little and my grandlittle all got me wine glasses or accessories! And it's become my mom's go-to stocking stuffer at Christmas 😂 Needless to say, I now have a lot of wine favorites that I thought I'd share with y'all to either get yourself or as a present idea for the Nikki in your life!

First off, every wine lover could always use another set of wine glasses because it's the worst when you run out of clean glasses. You've probably noticed in the pictures that I personally prefer stemless wine glasses because they feel more chic and girly. Another one of my wine musts are silicone wine glasses because then you can take them to the pool! This set comes with silicone wine glasses and a foldable bottle bag so it's perfect to take on a picnic (which I also love). Or if you want to travel with your actual bottle, I have a wine carrier sleeve that keeps it protected and chilled that I use when I bring a bottle over to chill with my friends.

Another one of my favorites that I use alllll the time is this electric wine opener. I bought this thing before my 1L year and for the first couple of days I kept it on the base plugged in on my counter, but then unplugged it and moved it to my bar shelf. It still has a charge! Plus it's just super easy and really quick and you don't have to worry about accidentally stripping a cork. But if you prefer the old-fashioned way or want a backup, this corkscrew is a great choice. I actually had to use a corkscrew on one of these bottles because the cork was too long for the electric opener. Of course you're going to want a place to display all of your corks, so I recommend this glass vase as a simple yet cute decoration to fill up.

I have a bar shelf to store all four of my Winc bottles, but you could also just as easily keep them all on your kitchen counter or table with a small wine rack. Speaking of wine storage, I highly recommend these silicone wine caps. These are one of the stocking stuffers that I got and I ended up loving them since they don't make the bottle too tall to fit in my little apartment fridge. They also are  better at protecting from accidental spillage if the bottle ends up on it's side. And if all else fails, this guzzle wine glass attached to the bottle and then you can turn any wine bottle into a giant-sized wine glass!

Also, if you love wine as much as me, then you can use my Winc link (ha it rhymes!) to sign up and get your first box for only $22! Obviously it has truly changed my life for the better 😍

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Winc Wine Subscription Review

Ahh y'all! This is one of my favorite posts so far! If you follow me on snapchat, then you've probably noticed that every Wednesday me and Ryan split a bottle of wine and have a fancy dinner together. And now that I have an Insta for the blog, you'll probably be seeing even more of this lol. The reason for all of this is that I subscribe to Winc!

Background story 

I'm obsessed with TheSkimm and read it every day religiously. One day they were offering a special for readers on your first Winc order (see why you should be getting these emails!) so I was like hmmm. In case you didn't know, I'm a big wine drinker and tbh a lot of times the only way I can make myself finish a reading is that I'll bribe myself with a glass when I'm done. But I was a sorority girl so usually the only wine I drink is Barefoot Mascato. I get a little self-conscious when I go out to restaurants and they have wines that I've never heard of and I'm too scared to order the wrong wine and waste like $10 on a glass of something I don't like. I decided to at least check it out because really anything with wine in it kinda gets my attention. 

What Winc is

What I liked the most about their site is that the very first thing you do is take a quiz. As a picky eater (so I guess drinker too) I have very strong feelings about what I do and don't like. Having this taste-test quiz made me a little more confident that I wasn't paying just to give away a bottle of wine that I didn't like. 

The next thing that I was a fan of is that it lets you choose your ratio of red to white wines. I prefer white wines so I chose 4 white and 0 red. What's nice is that as I get a little more adventurous, I can go back and slowly switch it up 1 or 2 bottles of red a month.

When I saw that I would be getting 4 bottles each month for $30 (after my first discounted month), I was pretty much sold. It helped that shipping is free too! I want to adventure out and learn about more wines and this is about how much I spent anyways so I was like sure why not. They have the option for you to "pause" your month's order which really helped me because if I'm ever broke (or maybe when I'm gone for next semester) I can pause it when I need it.

What I love is that you can either have them send you just 4 recommended bottles based on your quiz results, or you can even go in and browse their selection and choose any wines that you for sure want that month and they'll surprise you with the rest. And then after you try your wines, you rate each one so their recommendations will just keep getting better and better.

What I got

I can't tell y'all how excited I was to get that shipping notification! The day before I'd been grocery shopping and almost threw in a bottle of my go-to wine and then remembered nope I'm expanding my wines from now on so I had been patiently waiting. I did get a text warning me that someone over 21 will have to sign for the package. Normally this wouldn't be a problem because I'm 24, but my apartment accepts my packages for me so I was originally worried that only under-21 people would be working that day and couldn't sign and I'd be at work and obviously couldn't sign. I didn't want my wines to get sent back so I just went onto the FedEx app and re-routed my package to wait at my closest FedEx location so I could just come in and sign it.

It comes in this cute little box with a handle on it so you can easily carry it. I was super excited to open the box and honestly I was pretty tempted to open all four bottles at once and make a little flight. It even came with this cute little book called Winc Journal that showcased all of their wines and gave you some information about each wine. So here's what I got for July!

Another great thing that it has is a food pairing for each wine. Winc is actually great about this and about a week before I got my wine, they sent me an email with wine pairings just for my wines. This is one of my favorite parts about Winc because you're not just getting wines, you're getting a full fancy night. Me and Ryan already had a plan to try a new recipe each week and this completely took care of everything. I love, love, love that these are recipes that I've never had before and I feel so adventurous trying new things (this is a BIG deal for a picky eater). Another super great bonus is that all of the food we've made so far is fresh and healthy! Really, it feels like I'm getting a food subscription box for free with Winc.

Week one - Pacificana Chardonnay 

Ok so in the food-pairings email that I got, for some reason this wine wasn't on the list. I'm sure it was just a snaffoo, but it didn't bother me at all (I later realized that the recipe was also in the Winc Journal so here's what it was). I got the wines before Ryan moved in and wanted to wait on him to cook the dinners, so I figured this was the perfect one for me to start with. 

I jumped feet first with this wine going from the super sweet moscato to the drier (adultier) chardonnay. Not going to lie, I felt like an über suburban mom with my chard. I didn't have a coffee table yet when I drank this wine, so I just sat on my floor sipping it while reading a case for my summer class and then afterwards decided to take it in for a bubble bath. Honestly, a bubble bath and wine go so perfectly together that this wine really took me to my happy place.

Week two - Wonderful White Blend

By this week, Ryan had moved in so I let him go through the food pairings for the remaining three wines and he chose this one because it went with pasta and he loves pasta so pasta it was! This was an Asian pasta and growing up in the Texas panhandle, I'm not used to Asian food that goes beyond fried rice. Speaking of which, this recipe took us to 3 different stores to find all of the ingredients, so I definitely recommend that you don't wait until last minute to go grocery shopping for this.

But the recipe was surprisingly easy to make! I thought it was a little spicy (I'm a wimp when it comes to spiciness) so the wine actually really helped cool down my mouth. The recipe made so much that even after we finished our plates, we still had enough leftovers for another full meal. We ended up having it a few nights later and I just heated up some sesame seed oil in a pan and stir-fried it to reheat it and then added a little more soy sauce so it'd taste fresh. And it was just as good the second time! But by this time we didn't have any wine left.

We each only had a glass of the wine during supper (the food was that good) and then afterwards enjoyed the rest while relaxing and watching TV. It really was the perfect stay-in date night!

You can get the recipe here. This was Ryan's favorite meal that we've had so far!

Week three - Summer Water Rosé

Since Ryan picked the last meal, I got to pick this one. Honestly he wasn't too thrilled about it and kept complaining about the girly drink and how little the salad looked. Yep I chose the salad because it looked so fresh and I'm trying to eat healthy so this sounded exactly what I wanted. We ended up using lima beans instead of fava beans and some manchego cheese that I already had in my fridge. Another alteration that I made was that I just cut up the asparagus vertically like you do with hotdogs again and again because I didn't have a mandolin, and I thought it worked out just fine.

While we were making this salad, Ryan saw that it was essentially 3 vegetables all sliced up and said, "Yeah I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up making myself some mac and cheese to fill me up." But he didn't! It's soo strange because honestly you make it and you're like lolololol this is not a meal but it was surprisingly filling!

And the wine went perfectly with it, too! Honestly the whole meal was so summery and cute that I was really tempted to just pack everything in a picnic basket and speed to the nearest park! But I didn't make Ryan wait any longer because he'd already been super patient about waiting while I had a little photo shoot with our supper (I think this was the moment he regretted moving in with a blogger lol). 

You can get the recipe here. It was my favorite meal this month!

Week four - Brethren of the Road Riesling 

I saved the best for last because I already knew that I would like the riesling (it's what I get when they're out of moscato) and I wanted to make myself try new things before I got to this bottle. The recipe for this one was kinda perfect to be the last one of the month because it was one part Asian, one part salad, so I thought it was like a cute little summary of everything we'd had so far! 

This recipe was pretty easy to make because we actually had almost all of the ingredients already (the ingredients from the Asian pasta helped). This made it one of my favorite meals this month, budget-wise because it was really cheap for such a nice meal. The Asian salad really got me excited because for the first time in my life I tried radishes and learned that I like them! The sauce that goes on this stuff is amazing and this was definitely another win.

As for the wine, I knew I'd love it so I was pretty wine happy during supper. It was a beautiful summer evening that night so after I had my mini photo shoot we ate at the little table on my patio. And after we ate it was just perfect to sit out there and relax, chat, and sip. Seriously, if you're in a relationship, Winc nights are the perfect date nights! Also, check out the mint plant that we bought for one of our recipes! It makes the apartment smell so great and is super handy to have for cooking or making mojitos!

You can get the recipe here, but really I think you need the wine to get the full experience! 

Final thoughts

As you can tell, I'm now a Winc addict. It sounded expensive until I realized that I was already spending about that much on wine anyways, but with Winc you don't just get bottles of wine, you get the whole experience! I love that I'm trying foods I've never heard of and learning about all different kinds of wines that I probably wouldn't have ventured out to try if I was at a restaurant. The built-in date nights are also a big plus! They also have the Winc app that's perfect because you can go in there and see what wines you're getting or choose your own, see when the next shipment date is, track your shipment, and review the wines that you've tried. An extra bonus is that for every 10 wines you rate, you get $10 off your next order!

Even if you're not really into making all these meals, Winc is still a great investment. I drink a lot of wine because let's be honest, law school can get stressful at times. So it's nice to get a "you deserve this" box every month! And if you sign up using my link, you can get your first box for $22, which is cheaper than their normal first box special (see box below). If any of y'all out there end up subscribing to Winc, first of all you're welcome, and secondly comment below and let me know what your favorite wines are! This first box I just let them send me 4 recommendations, but I'm not opposed to going in and choosing some reader-recommended wines. Cheers!