06/17/2026
20 Years Young...
Twenty years.
Twenty years ago yesterday we sold our first bottle of wine...and we were kinda not going to do anything really, but we just could not help ourselves.
So we took our two best selling wines of all time over the last 20 years and are putting them on sale for $9.99 per bottle.
If the 25th anniversary is the Silver Anniversary, and the 50th is the Gold, what's the 20th?
I looked it up. It's China. As in, the material. Porcelain.
We'll take it. Porcelain is delicate but durable. It chips if you're careless. It lasts forever if you're not.
Here's what we know after 20 years in business: most people don't make it.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 20% of businesses fail in their first year. Half are gone by year five. By year ten, only a third are still standing. And by year twenty? A little over 20% of businesses are still operating.
One in five.
To stay open 20 years and grow from one store to nine across two states? There's no statistic for that, because almost nobody does it.
We opened winestore. on June 16th, 2006 with a simple idea: you shouldn't have to spend more than ten dollars to get a damn good bottle of wine. You can spend more if you want - but don't do it unless you want to.
That idea has never changed.
What has changed is everything else.
There was no iPhone in June of 2006. No Uber. No Spotify, Venmo, or Netflix streaming.
The economy collapsed in 2008. Wine trends came and went. Natural wine got hot. Orange wine got hot. Canned wine got hot. Pet Nat got hot. Big Napa Cabs fell out of favor. Then they came back. Distributors consolidated. Wineries closed. New ones opened. Tariffs threatened. Shipping laws shifted. Amazon tried to sell wine. Then they stopped. Then they tried again.
Through all of it, we've stayed in the same lane: find the best values we can, taste everything ourselves, and bring you wines that punch way above their weight.
Read the rest here: https://mailchi.mp/winestore-online/20thanniversary-june2026-105036
