FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

 
 

Wine Events

  • When an event is listed as sold out, it is in fact sold out. There are no more tickets available on an event that is listed as sold out. Be sure to take a look at our calendar page to see if there’s another event that you can join us for.

  • Waitlists are now available for sold out events. If the event you are wanting to attend is listed as sold out just add your email to the waitlist on the event’s ticketing page. If tickets become available an email will automatically be sent to those on the waitlist for that event. Tickets are always available on a first-come-first-served basis.

  • Wine Sails: Please arrive no later than twenty minutes before your scheduled departure time to be in line for our walk to the boat. Traffic into Portland can be quite heavy so be sure to allow extra time. Old Port vehicle and pedestrian traffic is a major challenge. We suggest you avoid driving on Commercial Street ... is usually at a crawl.

    Wine & Food Walks/Spirit Walks: Please arrive inside our starting location no later than 5-10 minutes before our start time to be seated for our scheduled start time. The meeting place will be announced by email the 3 days prior to your scheduled walk. Sometimes these emails land in your SPAM files, so be sure to check there if you don’t see it a few days before your scheduled event.

  • Wine & Food Walks/Spirit Walks: The meeting place will be announced by email the Wednesday before your event. If you have not received it take a peek in your spam folder to see if it landed there. Please arrive 5-10 minutes before our start time to be seated and comfortable for our on-time start.

    Wine Sails: We depart from the Maine State Pier (where we departed from 2012-2019). The Maine State Pier is located at the intersection of Franklin and Commercial Streets—through the driveway of the Casco Bay Ferry Terminal (with the whale wall on your left) you will keep walking on to the Maine State Pier until you reach Maine Sailing Adventures the first of the sheds on the pier. **Please walk and do not attempt to drive down to the pier. There is no parking there (the garage is full with cars from island residents)and you will likely be stuck in traffic for a long time.** Please arrive 20 minutes before our start time to be boarded and seated for our on-time departure.

  • Where do I park?

    It is imperative to allow extra time for travel to and parking in Portland, Maine. On-street parking is difficult to find in Portland and is limited to 2 hours maximum. There are many parking garages and lots in Portland. View the downtown map to see which one is convenient for you.

    For the Wine Sails, we usually have good luck finding a spot in the garage on the corner of Fore and Pearl streets. The Casco Bay Ferry Terminal Parking Garage at the Maine State Pier is usually full of seasonal island residents’ cars. We suggest you avoid driving on Commercial Street in the Spring and Summer months ... is usually at a crawl.

  • Wine Sails: Chances are that it will be much warmer on land for the beginning of our wine sail and get cooler as the evening progresses and the temps drop as the sun sets out on the bay. So please bring a warm sweater, jacket, or something to wrap up in with you. The Captain also asks that non-marking flat shoes or sneakers. Please do not wear high-heel shoes for safety reasons and for maintaining the beauty of the boat deck.

    Wine & Food Walks/Spirit Walks: Please wear comfortable walking shoes and dress for the weather.

  • They are welcome to get a ticket and enjoy the other parts of the event. We do not have a reduced ticket price in this case since our costs to put on the event do not change if one or a few people are not having wine.

  • Yes, we highly recommend buying your tickets in one transaction. When people are left to their own schedule to get their own tickets, events usually sell out before everyone has purchased their tickets. The number of tickets available is our maximum capacity. Once he event is sold out, we are not able to open more tickets. Please see our “waitlist” faq response for more information.

  • We do not send tickets in the mail. So many people forget them and it causes issues with a necessary on-time departure. Your email receipt is your “ticket”. Embedded in your email confirmation email is a link that is Required reading for all passengers and provides you and your guests everything you need to know. It is required reading for all passengers. Please forward it to everyone in your party so they can a) be prepared and b) be on time for our boarding which is 20 minutes before your scheduled departure time. Sometimes these emails land in your SPAM files, so be sure to check if you don’t see it as soon as you buy your tickets.

  • Due to our size, cancellations and rescheduling requests affect us significantly. It’s not always possible for us to see your correspondence on the days we have events. With this in mind, we have updated our policies for the 2024 season regarding cancellation and rescheduling requests. We are not able to accommodate cancellation or reschedule requests 24 hours before the start of the event.

    Please note, once you have purchased your tickets our policy requires that to refund or reschedule Wine Wise must first be able to resell your tickets which includes a cancellation or rescheduling fee per ticket. We recommend reaching out as early as possible if you need to cancel or reschedule to allow ample time to resell your tickets. The sooner we are aware, the better the chances. You are always welcome to send a friend or family member in your place or sell your tickets yourself, just provide us with the new ticket holder's name and email address so we can send them the event notifications, location details, and any day-of weather-related notifications. There are no refunds or rescheduling for no-shows or tickets we cannot resell.

    Cancellation Requests: If you can contact us before 24 hours of your scheduled event, and we can resell your tickets, we can refund your ticket price minus a $30 credit card transaction and cancellation fee per ticket. When reaching out to make a cancellation request, please include your order number.

    Reschedule Requests: If you can contact us before 24 hours of your scheduled event, and we can resell your tickets, we can reschedule you to a different date with availability for a $15 rescheduling fee per ticket. When reaching out to make a rescheduled request, please include your order number and the event you would like to be rescheduled to. Please note that if an event displays that there is only one ticket available or the event is sold out, that is accurate.

  • Wine Sails: We will not sail in heavy rain or heavy fog. If there is a chance of rain, we will send an email out to everyone in the morning to touch base. If by chance the sail is cancelled due to inclement weather we will reschedule you on another sail, issue you a refund, or a credit, whichever you prefer. The Captain will keep an eye on any weather issues and try to make the call roughly an hour before departure time or sooner if it appears that rain or fog is imminent. Sometimes the weather is so iffy that we need to make the call at the last minute. That is the nature of sailing.

    Wine & Food Walks/Spirit Walks: Walks are held rain, snow, or shine. If rain or snow is in the forecast please bring an umbrella along with you.

  • Wine Sails: Up to 40 people. There is a seat for everyone.

    Wine & Food Walks/Spirit Walks: We accommodate up to 22 attendees.

  • While we love dogs and kids, our events are the limited to humans 21 years of age and older.

  • All orders will say pending until after the event/order takes place and after we manually mark it as fulfilled. This last step is not something we usually do given other demands on our time.

Private Events

  • A private event is essentially a buyout … the number of attendees allowed multiplied by the ticket price. For smaller groups it often makes more sense to purchase the number of tickets that you need for our highly-rated public events. We do recommend purchasing all the tickets at once to ensure that everyone in your group has a ticket before the event sells out.

  • We sure do. As long as we are not scheduled for an event in Portland, we can travel to you. We frequently do wine appreciation events in private homes, restaurants, and businesses throughout Maine and New England. We have even traveled as far as Las Vegas, New Jersey, San Diego, and Vermont for our customers. Just let us know what you are thinking and I am sure we can make something work based on schedules and availability.

  • Visit our Private Events page to learn more.

Wine Shop

  • We deliver to Cape Elizabeth, Cumberland Foreside, Falmouth, Ocean Park, Old Orchard Beach, Portland, Saco, Scarborough, South Portland, Westbrook, and Yarmouth. We have a larger delivery area for wine club member deliveries.

 

Wine Trips

  • Small-Group Trips: Most of our small-group trips include 8-12 people. Some may include less, depending on the region. Please refer to the description of each trip to determine the trip’s attendance capacity.

Wine Club

  • The following cities and towns in Southern Maine: Cape Elizabeth, Cumberland, Cumberland Center, Cumberland Foreside, Falmouth, Ocean Park, Old Orchard, Portland, Saco, Scarborough, South Portland, Westbrook, and Yarmouth.

  • The major differences are that the Explorer Club receives tasting notes and food pairing suggestions and there is no customization. We’ll specially curate 12 wines each month for the Explorer Club, 6 whites, and 6 reds—those will have tasting notes and food pairings suggestions. The Cuvée Club is all about customization with access to our entire wine cellar on a monthly basis but without the tasting notes and food pairing suggestions. If you want to include some of the month’s Explorer Club wines in your customized monthly selection as well, we’ll certainly include the tasting notes and pairing suggestions for those wines based on availability.

  • Explorer Level = Sommelier-curated wines that will introduce you to different grape varieties, styles, and regions from around the world. These wines deliver incredible value and do not need to be further aged to taste their best.

    Elevated Level = Sommelier-curated wines with incredible merit, complexity, long finish, balance, and distinction. We have tasted many fine wines recently and have chosen only those that we think are remarkable. In many cases, we have purchased the whole lot. Some we are cellaring to be released in years to come, and some are so rare and so highly sought after with wide-ranging prices and cellar release dates.

  • We'll reach out to you each month to have a conversation to determine your needs, wine preferences, and budget for the month's wine order of 6 or more bottles. We'll keep your card on file to process your custom order each month. The number of bottles (minimum of 6) and styles of wines can change from month to month.

  • We are not permitted to ship wine.

  • If you are in one of our Explorer clubs and want to switch to a different explorer level club (e.g., Explorer 3 Reds to Explorer 6 Reds), simply log into your account, cancel your subscription, and subscribe to the new club type.

    If you are an Explorer Club and want to switch to Cuvée 6+, reach out to us, and we will help facilitate that.

    If you are a Cuvée 6+ Club member and want to switch to the Explorer Club, reach out to us, and we will help facilitate that.

  • Exactly on the same day of the month that you originally subscribed. So if you subscribe on the second day of the month, it will be the second day of each month that the payment will be processed.

  • We deliver only to the cities and towns listed. If you live or work in any of the cities and towns listed, we can deliver to you. If your delivery address is different than your billing address, please make sure that we have a clear understanding of the delivery address and that it is in our delivery area.

  • Reach out to us as soon as possible, and we will see if we have another delivery in your area or if it makes more sense to combine with your next month's club delivery.

  • Our wine club delivery area includes more cities and towns than our other delivery services. It's a perk of the wine club!

  • Yes! You are welcome to add on any of our wine sets and/or order a custom selection of any wines that we have in inventory. The wines we provide are often in very limited supply and are available on a first-come, first-served basis, and are always available to our wine club members first.

  • Log-in to your Wine Wise account to make any changes.

  • Not at all. We have some customers that are only in our delivery area in the Summer months and are members during that time. You can cancel your subscription anytime by logging into your Wine Wise account on the website.

  • Not at this time. But you can switch your club anytime. And we do offer a mix of reds and whites in our Explorer 6 Club.

  • Yes, you can get rosés as part of the Cuvée 6+ club because it is completely customizable to your tastes and preferences on a monthly basis.

  • Explorer 6 and Cuvée 6+ Members with continuous membership January-June and/or July-December will be invited to attend our Semi-Annual Soirée in June and December, respectively. If you were not a 6-bottle member for the full 6-month window, we can catch you up!