We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nia Ruth a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Nia, thanks for joining us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

Unlike big box wine clubs, my Wine Club shares three bottles of delicious small-batch wines from a single winery each month (that you can’t find at your local wine shop!). We go beyond just giving our members the best small production wines: we host a live tasting with the winemaker and winery owners so members can learn the stories behind the bottles and get an in-depth understanding of the wine in their glass directly from the producers themselves – an experience you’d typically only have at the winery! The Club helps members expand their palate, learn about their wine preferences, and gather the skills to select wines they’ll love, all while fostering a community of wine lovers. Also uniquely, there’s a charitable component to the Club, and we donate $1 from each monthly membership to a cause of the winery’s choice.

Nia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a wine-loving psychologist turned Wine Expert and Wine Club Founder. While completing my PhD in psychology research at NYU and working for several years consulting in the social welfare space, I’d fallen completely in love with wine, and could no longer deny my desire to know, love, and sip more of it. It was a whirlwind from there: I took my first introductory wine course at San Diego State University in 2018, and have since completed my WSET levels 2 and 3, started blogging about wine, became the wine columnist at San Diego Magazine, and traveled far and wide visiting vineyards and trying some of the world’s most delicious wines throughout Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, South Africa, Morocco, Croatia, Israel, Mexico, and across the U.S.

During that time I learned the value of small-batch wine and how difficult small production wines are to identify and access. Late last year, I took the plunge, left my 9 to 5, and began working on my Wine Club full-time so that I could bring delicious small-batch wines directly to wine lovers’ doorsteps all across the country. It’s been the best decision I’ve ever made!

My goal is to source the most delicious small production, hard-to-find wines and teach you how to choose bottles you absolutely love, whether you’re overwhelmed at the wine shop or ordering a glass of wine with dinner at your favorite restaurant. We work directly with small-production wineries to showcase the best wines from their portfolio to our Wine Club members. Highlighting one producer per month, I personally sample and select a three-bottle combination that will give our members the best experience of that producer’s wines.

As a member of the Club, you’ll expand your wine knowledge, refine your palate, and discover new wine regions while you enjoy delicious wine you can’t find at your local wine shop. And you’ll get the wine country experience at our exclusive members-only virtual tastings: you’ll sip alongside each small-batch producer and friends old and new to gain insider knowledge directly from the people behind the wines!

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

The Wine Club originated in the living room of my studio apartment in San Diego a few years ago. My friends were always asking for wine recommendations and were really interested in learning more about the wines we would drink, so I began hosting them all monthly to taste and learn about new wines together! Friends started bringing friends and friends-of-friends and it quickly grew into our favorite event of the month. Before I knew it, we’d created our very own little Wine Club!

I realized how special what we had created really was, and I knew I wanted to continue sharing delicious boutique wines with great people and connecting them to other like-minded wine lovers. It was a huge risk, but my love of wine and bringing people together was strong and I knew it was time to quit my 9 to 5 in research and consulting and reinvent my Wine Club on a larger scale. The Wine Club has become my way of sharing the experience we created in my studio apartment with wine lovers around the country!

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

My reputation in the wine industry has come from creating a business that reflects my values. I know that there are lots of people who like myself many years ago, love wine but don’t know enough about it to make the best wine buying decisions. As I became more and more knowledgeable about wine and was introduced to incredible small production wineries around the world, I wanted to share all of my wine knowledge and recommendations with other wine lovers to help them live their best wine life!

I started by creating a social media presence, newsletter, and blog to share wine recommendations and tips. Over time, the requests for wine recommendations and advice became nearly constant, and it became clear that I should take it a step further and bring my wine recommendations to life by delivering my favorite small production wines directly to people’s doorstep. I curated a Wine Club that highlights the things that are most important to me, but are sometimes overlooked: First, it was important to give my members access to each small producer featured in the Club and have the chance to hear their stories and ask them questions, as if they were at the winery. Thus, my Wine Club focuses on one winery each month and I host monthly live virtual tastings with my Wine Club members and the producer so they can learn about each wine directly from the people that made them. Second, I love bringing people together, so I also wanted to create a social environment to introduce wine lovers to each other (I have some in-person events and trips in the works down the line – stay turned!). Finally, as I started my career in the social welfare space, that work is still near and dear to my heart, so it is important to me to continue to contribute to important causes. With that, I created the charitable component of my Wine Club and donate $1 from each monthly membership to a cause of each partner winery’s choice.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.niaruth.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/niaruthwine/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/niaruthwine
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/76645943/admin/

Image Credits
Christi Clark (@christiclarkphoto)