Privacy Policy
Last updated 19 September 2026.
Wine Doctrine is published by Wine Doctrine LLC, a California limited liability company. This page explains what the site knows about you, why, and what you can do about it.
The short version: we collect what an account and a subscription require, and nothing else. There are no advertising trackers here, no pixels following you around the internet, and nothing about you is sold or shared with anyone for their own purposes.
What we collect
When you create an account: your email address, the display name you choose, and a password, which is stored as an irreversible hash rather than as text anyone can read.
When you subscribe: Stripe collects and processes your card details. We never see them and they never touch this site. What we keep is a Stripe customer reference, a subscription reference, your plan, its status and its renewal date, so the site knows whether to unlock.
When you comment or like something: the comment text, the date, your display name and, as WordPress does by default, the IP address the comment came from.
When you simply visit: our host keeps ordinary server logs — IP address, browser, the pages requested — for security and troubleshooting. We do not build profiles from them.
Cookies
Signing in sets a cookie so you stay signed in, and commenting may set one so you do not have to retype your details. That is the extent of it. There are no advertising cookies and no third-party trackers.
We do not currently use analytics of any kind. If that changes we will say so here and choose something that does not track people across other websites.
Who else is involved
Four companies handle data on our behalf, each for one job:
- Stripe — payments and subscription billing. They receive your card details and email address directly.
- Postmark — sending email such as password resets and receipts. They receive your address and the contents of those messages.
- Rocket.net — hosting. Your data sits on their servers in the United States.
- Cloudflare — serving the site and forwarding mail sent to our addresses.
None of them may use your information for their own purposes. We do not sell or share personal information, and we never have.
A note on sponsorship
Some tastings and bottles reach us as samples, at trade events, or occasionally through sponsorship. Where that is the case the review says so, on the review itself. That is an editorial disclosure rather than a privacy matter, and it involves no data about you: sponsors receive nothing about our readers, ever, and have no access to this site’s records.
How long we keep it
Your account details stay while your account exists. Comments stay while they are published. Billing records are kept as long as tax and accounting rules require, which in practice means several years. Server logs are kept briefly and then discarded.
Close your account and we delete your personal details. Comments can be removed with them if you ask, or left with the name detached.
Your rights
If you live in California, the CCPA gives you the right to know what we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to opt out of its sale or sharing — which does not arise here, since we do neither — and not to be treated worse for asking.
If you live in the UK or the European Union, you have broadly equivalent rights of access, correction, deletion and portability.
In both cases the process is the same: email us and ask. We will answer within thirty days and will not require you to jump through hoops or explain yourself.
Security
The site runs over HTTPS, passwords are hashed, and card details never reach our servers. No site can promise perfect security, but we have deliberately kept the amount of sensitive information we hold as small as possible, because the safest data is the data you never collected.
Children
This site is about wine and is intended for adults. It is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under sixteen.
Changes
If this policy changes materially we will email subscribers before it takes effect. The date at the top always reflects the current version.
Getting in touch
Write to admin@winedoctrine.com with any question about your data, including a request to see or delete it. A real person reads it.
Wine Doctrine LLC
936 B 7th Street #123
Novato, CA 94945