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Tasty Startups: Underground Cellar, Young And Mature

underground cellar

Tasty Startups: Underground Cellar

underground cellar landing

 

 

The Craving it Satisfies

Underground Cellar is an exciting wine marketplace with an innovative model that works for consumers and winemakers.

 

Why it has a winning recipe

It’s a bit of a mystery as to why wine clubs are… rather ho hum. They deliver wine, after all! Too many? Too many wines that fail to impress tossed into the mix? Too little flexibility month to month? Or, maybe the perks just don’t merit signing up for a membership over going to the store and living with the surprises you encounter there?

 

Who knows? Rather than try to solve the mystery and get a wine club right, Underground Cellar offers something entirely different, fresh, and genuinely enticing. It’s a wine marketplace with a delightful business model.

 

Find time-limited offers on curated wine (sometimes grouped by varietal, sometimes by a single winemaker), tastefully chosen. Buy wines and receive automatic and random upgrades to premium wines. The more you buy, the more bottles in your order that will be switched out for more expensive alternates.

 

So, you start with a base of wines that you want and you end up with a few knockout surprises (which you know the possible identities of in advance). No membership fees. No obligations or restrictions. No wine forced down your throat. What’s not to like?

 

Discounts? Been there, done that. Don’t get me wrong, discounts are great, but don’t they arouse suspicion for wine? Is the winery dumping a bad vintage? If they could afford to discount a bottle at this price, why couldn’t it always be sold as such?

 

Underground Cellar doesn’t do discounts. Instead, they feature complimentary upgrades to higher-priced wines. The deal is more or less the same – the wines would probably show up on the market at reduced prices at some point – but looks completely different. Wine lovers don’t have to fish around for deals or hold their breath for a chance to enjoy great wines, while winemakers preserve the prestige, allure (pricing!) and integrity of their brand. Everybody wins.

 

On top of the delicious wine offers (the potential of nabbing a rare 2008 Zapata Catena Malbec in the Magical Malbec Collection left no doubt in my mind that the startup is serious about the grapes it showcases), Underground Cellar also serves as a cloud cellaring service.

 

Buyers have the option of having wine shipped immediately or cellared with the startup. You can then have wines from different batches shipped on-demand when the occasion warrants, maybe even saving a few bucks in shipping costs.

 

Smart, smart, smart.

 

A wine service that we haven’t seen before, that’s easy to appreciate on many levels. Startups, pay attention – this is a shining example of how to think outside the box (bottle?). Take a closer look at what’s in the bins at undergroundcellar.com. Wine lovers, rejoice!

 

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Finally a wine service with sexy legs @ucellar

 

Photo Credits

Underground Cellar

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