(Popdust) - When buying new wines in a wine shop, there’s a good chance you’ll end up shelling out big bucks for bottles you don’t particularly care for. This is because the economics of the wine industry are awful, from vineyard to winery to distributor to wine shop to customer. Whether you grab a bottle on the way home from work or make bigger, weekend wine-shop visits, you’re more likely than not to end up with wine that costs too much, doesn’t suit your tastes or both. But Tasting Room seeks to change all that. The innovative service provides you direct access to fine wines at a discount, educates you about the wines you like best, and lets you taste first. Here are the three worst things about the wine industry, and how Tasting Room helps you get around them.

1. Making Wine is Too Expensive

It is extremely pricey to grow and produce wine. I don’t want to bore you with the details, but a winery ends up investing millions of dollars in land, farming machinery, construction and winemaking equipment before it even crushes one grape. You’ll end up shelling out big bucks to cover all these costs if you buy from a store or even the winery directly.

In fact, land suited to grape growing is so expensive that it’s very common for wineries not to have enough property to satisfy demand for their wines. In this case, they buy wine from contract producers, who own larger properties in the same region. The winery can simply sample a range of wines made by the contractor, and choose the right one to blend with theirs so they have enough supply for the consumers.

Tasting Room has direct relationships with contract producers in regions all over the world. Just like the top wineries that contract producers sell their wines to, Tasting Room gets to sample and purchase those same wines, and provide them directly to you at a huge discount. Tasting Room doesn’t have the cost of owning land, farm machinery or winemaking equipment – so you get incredible prices on fine wine.

2. Pricing and Selection Subject to Change

For most people, running to the liquor store seems like the easiest option when you need a bottle of wine. But liquor stores don’t usually have the best selection – or the best prices, for that matter. They have limited shelf space, and the markup on the wines reflects their rents and overhead (plus the wineries’ expenses). It’s not the store’s fault that rent is expensive, however their model leaves many people paying up to a 30% higher price than they would online or even at another liquor store nearby! Regardless of which store you choose, the chances of you leaving a liquor store without footing a large bill are slim and slim.

3. Most Shops Have No Idea What They’re Selling

You’ll likely get a recommendation provided by a store employee based on their focus on the bottom line, or because the bottle is what they like – but not necessarily what you will like. There’s no right or wrong when it comes to taste – it’s all about your unique preferences, so if you shop at a liquor store, there’s no guarantee you’ll enjoy the bottle you pick up.

Even better than providing access to a ton of fine wines from regions around the world at a discount, Tasting Room also lets you taste first before you commit to buying multiple bottles.

Here’s how it works: When you sign up, Tasting Room sends you a kit with six-tasting size bottles of wine, which you sip and rate on their site. You just log on to the site and follow the fun tasting in which you compare the wines against each other, then click on the selections you like. Your responses generate your Wine Profile, which describes the different types of wines you’re likely to enjoy. You’ll learn about new wines – and get to drink them too. You also learn the regions that grow the wines best suited for you, and the foods you should enjoy alongside them.