An Honest Review of Flaviar
This is a great Sunday. It's a hot day, but I'm sitting here in my nice cool house sipping on a lil' glass of whiskey, basking in the wonderful thought that I don't have to work tomorrow! It's labor day! Woooohooooo!!!
The whiskey reminded me that I wanted to tell you all about this new thing we're trying out - it's called Flaviar. Maybe you've heard of it? It's a "club for explorers at heart." We call it a "whiskey club," but they have a lot more than just whiskey.
Flaviar is for those of us who want to try new and interesting liquors, and expand our knowledge.
Here's how it works:
First, you join Flaviar! Kind of like a beer-of-the-month club, you pay a fee to receive periodic shipments. In this case, though, you don't receive full bottles. It's $60 per quarter, but we paid in advance for the year which brought the cost down slightly to about $52 per quarter.
Once you join, here's what you get:
- A Welcome Box
- Free Quarterly Tasting boxes
- Free shipping on one item each month
- Access to unique and rare spirits
- Entry into the School of Spirits - a great way to learn all about the "art of tasting."
- Invitation to exclusive events & member-exclusive private bottling.
Let me break down some of these perks for you.
Welcome Box:
A few weeks after we joined, we received our welcome box. This box included three 45 ml samples of whiskey. We also received a 375 ml bottle of WhistlePig 10 Year Old Rye Whiskey because of a special promotion when we signed up.
First of all, the packaging was adorable. Each tasting box (including the welcome box) comes with a nice little Flaviar coaster. The box also includes a card with the flavor profile (they call it a "flavor spiral") for each of the samples you receive. Look how pretty:
The three samples we received were: Breckenridge Bourbon, Few Rye Whiskey, and Wolfburn Northland. Of the three samples, we really only liked the Breckenridge. This is likely because we tend to favor Bourbon Whiskey. The Rye Whiskey, and the Scotch (Northland) just didn't appeal to either of us. It was fun to try something new though!
Unfortunately we don't love the WhistlePig either. I actually kind of think it tastes like dirt. But again, I don't usually like Rye Whiskey. If you do, you might feel different! I am no whiskey expert, I just know what I like.
Free Shipping:
We have already taken advantage of the monthly free shipping. Some of the spirits they sell on the Flaviar site we have access to at our local liquor store, but some we have never seen before. We decided to use our free shipping to order a bottle we hadn't come across around our local stores - Contradiction Bourbon Smooth Ambler. We did enjoy it, though I can't say it'll be our new go-to Bourbon. We did some price comparisons before we purchased the bottle, and it actually seemed like we were getting it for a reasonable price thanks to the free shipping. We saw this bottle for the same price on other sites, but you'd have to pay to ship it.
We just placed our second order to use up our free shipping credit for August. You can use the credit for bottles, or for tasting boxes similar to the welcome box! We decided to purchase a Tequila tasting box called "The Mexican Standoff." It includes two different Tequilas and one Mezcal. I'll post an update once we receive it and let you know what we thought! We love being able to taste theses drinks before purchasing larger bottles. The tasting boxes are $37.99 and you get three 45 ml samples in each box.
So, is it worth it?
Yes - depending on what you are looking for. If you are looking to get bargain prices for high end liquors, this is not that type of service. If you are just looking to see what else is out there in the world beyond your local liquor store, and expand your knowledge about what you are drinking, then this is exactly what you want.
I will say, I'm a bit disappointed that we haven't tasted anything yet that we felt "wowed" by. So far I'm not going to buy a full-size bottle of anything we've tasted, but we are still very early in! I'll post updates after our next few tasting boxes.
At this point, I don't see us renewing Flaviar for a second year. We just don't have the budget to really make the most of it! I've seen many rare and hard to find liquors on their site, and that's great. If you have the money to spend on those bottles, then it's really awesome. You get access to those rare spirits with minimal work. We personally don't have $2,500 laying around to splurge on a bottle of whiskey, so this isn't a perk that we've really been able to enjoy. I'm hoping that over the next year they'll have some small tastings of some of these high-end spirits available that might be within our price range (I'm looking at you pappy van winkle!)
The tasting boxes are fun and I'm enjoying that aspect of this service. I just wish that it was either cheaper, or that you received free tasting boxes more frequently (monthly, for example, would be great.)
Anyway, time to start laboring on this post ;) ;) I'm off to enjoy the rest of my weekend! I'll be back soon with an update once I've had more time to experience Flaviar!
