Deal Stacking Showdown: Wine.com vs. Wine Access on Shafer Relentless

I noticed today that Wine Access has the 2017 Shafer Relentless on offer.

It's been quite a while since we discussed this wine. It won Wine Spectator's Wine of the Year in 2012, for the 2008 vintage of the wine.

The QPR has fallen a bit:

• 2008 96WS/$60 Release Price
• 2017 94 WS/$95 Release Price

...but the wine has been tremendously consistent, and remarkably highly rated by Spectator:

Clearly, it's a solid wine.

I thought it would be a good chance to compare pricing between Wine Access and Wine.com while comparing the best stackable discounts with a specific wine in mind.

Let's Start with Wine Access

2017 Shafer Vineyards Relentless Napa Valley $88-$95/btl [affiliate link]

The $88/btl price comes when buying 3+ bottles.

3 x $88 is $264 which works out pretty well with the $100 off $250 link I mentioned yesterday.

That would take it down to $164 for 3 bottles or $54.66/btl.

Shipping is included on $120+ orders.

You could shop through a portal if it's your first order, though I'd probably use a $50 off $150 referral code if it was your first order.

But let's call Wine Access $54.66/btl.

Let's see if we can do better with Wine.com...

2016 Shafer Relentless $99.99 [affiliate link]

Not quite the same vintage (though inventory varies by state, and this should click over to the 2017 soon), this 2016 was rated 92 points.

$50 off $150 is probably the best Wine.com promo code we could use. Here are a few that should be acitve (HT Jin F on Wine Berserkers):

• PIN50 $50 off $150
• P50AM $50 off $150
• YT50 $50 off $150
• CQS50 $50 off $150
• CQ50 $50 off $150
• FBRT50 $50 off $150

We'd have to come up with some other wines that are right around $50 to get it right to 33% off, but if we did that would make the price $66.66/btl for the Shafer Relentless on Wine.com.

If we use a promo code on Wine.com we can't use a free shipping code. So it would be key to get StewardShip. It's hard to determine a realistic amortized cost of StewardShip but if you order from Wine.com once a month it would be around $5 per order.

But wait - there's more!

There are a couple of active Wine.com Amex Offers you might be targeted for:

• $30 back on $100
• $10 back on $50

Let's call that 20% off. So that knocks it down to $53.32/btl.

Wine.com pays out on shopping portals for existing customers, and right now Rakuten is offering 12x back for orders through their app.

If you don't have a Rakuten account yet you can get $30 back after your first $30+ order through referral. If you have an Amex card that earns Membership Rewards, your Rakuten account can be linked to your Amex account 1:1. I value Membership Rewards at 1.25 cents each so that would be 15% back.

That would be $9.99 back on a $66.66 order.

So that would knock the Wine.com price down to $43.32/btl.

But not everyone will have that Amex Offer, and even if you did it would be difficult to scale, so without an Amex Offer that's $56.67/btl for Wine.com.

Shafer Relentless: Final Score

Release Price: $95

Wine Access: $54.66/btl

Wine.com: $56.67/btl

You might be able to do slightly better with either of these prices if it's your first order, you're targeted for an Amex Offer, a portal rate increase, etc. But either retailer does pretty well on pricing if you stack 

Bottom Line

If you look nationwide on Wine-Searcher it's hard to beat either of these prices.

My local Total Wine has the 2016 Shafer Relentless for $99.97/btl.

So that's it. That's why I play the stacking game. Because it results in deep discounts (around 55% off) on high quality wine delivered directly to my doorstep.