(SanDiegoUnionTribune) - When giving a gift to a special person this holiday season, smart shoppers can make one phone call and be remembered for months to come. Giving a friend or loved one a membership to the right wine-of-the-month club is that gift. If your search leads you to find the right one, you just may want to sign yourself up as well.

If indeed you do find the right wine-of-the-month club, you can enjoy well-chosen wines sent to your door monthly, and learn more about wine at your leisure. I know people in wine clubs who are gleeful when their shipment arrives and eagerly rip the package open to see what treasure awaits them.

Of course, that is if you are in the right wine club. You must choose carefully, however, and there are thousands from which to choose.

Here is some essential information to help guide you to your best possible match from the three basic types of wine clubs.

Winery wine clubs

One type of wine club is associated with a specific winery, where the club member will receive the new release winery offerings, perhaps a few times a year.

This type of membership may allow you, as the club member, to get better pricing and be assured of getting some of the top wines from the winery. Some specialized wine productions are so small that the wine never makes it to a retail shelf and can only be obtained by being a member of the wine club.

Sometimes other benefits are offered, such as annual parties or stay-overs at the winery. As long as the club member enjoys the winery products, this is essentially a good wine club setup. However, the consumer is getting only one style of wine, and generally wine consumers like to try many different wines and styles.

Third-party wine clubs

This version of a wine club is one that is set up to provide a lineup of wines that are generally mediocre at best. They come with great claims of a certain wine expert traveling to distant or specific wine lands to find wines nobody has discovered until they did.

The basic scheme is to find bulk wines from an established winery that didn’t want to sell the wine with its name on it. No problem. They simply make up a winery name, do artwork for the label and sell it off as the “newest, greatest” discovery. The results are typically hit or miss, with more misses than hits.

If finding the “newest, greatest” wine is not enough to seduce you, they will lure potential members to join what appears to be an initially attractive offer of 12 bottles of carefully selected wines for $40, or some such compelling sales pitch. Generally, these offerings reach the consumer via a mass-mailing program. If you receive an offer similar to this, be very wary.

These clubs typically prey on beginners, and it takes a few months before you may remember to turn off the wine club, or worse, you signed up for an extended period of time.

Wine clubs like this do a disservice to both you the consumer as well as the wine industry. When people are just beginning to discover wine, paying for and drinking inferior wine just becomes discouraging for them.

A great wine club

On the bright side, having a package of excellent wines show up at the door one day and digging into it is rewarding, fun and educational.

A great wine club will offer different levels of bottle pricing and have selections not just from one winery or one state or country, but a selection of the finest wines from anywhere on the planet.

Each wine would come from an established, identifiable wine producer and would be well-priced. It would be a wine not found in grocery stores, or maybe even any wine shops. It could be an exclusive offering from a small producer that no other retailers have access to. And the club member should be able to order more bottles (with discounts) if desired.

The club wines would be supplemented with educational material, describing the producer, how and why the wine is unique and exceptional, and why it belongs on your table.