Ben Herila, Chief Technology Officer

Underground Cellar has come up with an interesting new concept for wine sales, where its customers are able purchase package deals that include random, free upgrades to premium, rare, and private-stash bottles from a number of wineries. These wines can then be shipped immediately to the consumer, or they can stored in Underground Cellar’s own climate and temperature-controlled wine cellar for on-demand shipping.

We’ve gamified online wine buying with our ‘upgrade’ ecommerce technology. Been in business 3 years, backed by Silicon Valley VCs, such as Y Combinator, Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran, and Jason Calacanis.

Underground Cellar is a groundbreaking online wine marketplace for discovering and buying premium wine that randomly rewards our consumers with free upgrades to rare and private-stash bottles from prestigious wineries. Members can increase their chance of being upgraded to a higher-value bottle by referring friends, purchasing wine, and participating in discussions with other users. Underground Cellar is free to join and everyone of legal drinking age 21+ is invited.

Unlike the other countless "deep discount" ecommerce websites, we take a different approach to helping wineries move inventory. Rather than providing value to our members through discounts, value is provided through randomized upgrades to more premium wines. Not only does this provide an exciting new way for wine consumers to experience high-end wines they might not otherwise go to the store and buy, but it allows a winery to maintain its price point by never advertising their product at a discount. Discounts ruin brands - We preserve them.

Each week we post offers exclusive to Underground Cellar members only. Each offer is comprised of a few similar wines of different price points. Our members only pay for the lowest priced bottle in the offer, and have the chance to be upgraded to the higher priced bottles. Chances for an upgrade are fully transparent, and all of this information is provided on the offer pages. Most of our deals are direct with the wineries, so you're receiving wine directly from the winery itself. This means you're purchasing bottles with the highest possible provenance. Please be patient as the winery gets your wine to the shipping facility and then directly to your door.

We provide our members the ability to accumulate and store their purchases for free and for an unlimited amount of time in our state-of-the-art, humidity and temperature controlled wine cellar located in Napa Valley, CA. Known as the “CloudCellar,” members can mix-and-match bottles from different wineries over time, and when they are ready to take them out of the “cellar,” they simply click on their “CloudCellar” tab and select which bottles they want delivered. Our members can even request them to arrive chilled and ready to drink to nearly anywhere in the US. This is a cost-effective and great way to accumulate bottles as users only pay $5 when shipping 6+ bottles, with free shipping when shipping 12+ bottles.