Privacy Policy

Last updated: January 1, 2022

Contents

1. Types of Information We Collect

Information You Actively Submit: If you purchase from us, register for an online account with us, use the "wine alert" features of our online services, sign up for updates and marketing communications from us, request specific products from us, contact us for customer service, or otherwise interact with us via our online services or in one of our stores, we may collect personal information about you, including the following:

Contact Data, which may include your name, alias, mailing address, email address and telephone number; Order information and Account Data, which may include your contact data, payment card information, billing address, birth date and the details of the products or services you have ordered, purchased or requested from us; Wine Alerts and Favorite Wines Data, which may include your contact data and the products or services you are interested in; Social Media Data, which may include your social media interactions with us (e.g., if you "like" or "share" or "comment" on something you see on our social media platforms) and any information you actively provide to us for social media marketing purposes. We may also use services provided by third-party platforms (such as social networking and other websites) to choose and target lookalike audiences on such platforms and to create own advertisements, and we may provide a hashed version of your email address or other information to the platform provider for such purposes; Correspondence Data, which you voluntarily provide to us when booking an appointment or signing up for an event we are holding, making inquiries to customer service, comments on our social media, survey feedback, interests if you choose to participate in our wine club program, and any other information you actively provide to us. Information Passively Submitted on our Online Services: When you use our online services, we collect information from or about the computer, phone or other device on which you have installed, or from which you access, our online services, and information about your usage of our online services, including the following:

Technical Data, which includes your IP address, browser type and version, device identifier, location and time zone setting, network and/or service provider, operating system and platform, page response times, and download errors; Online Usage and Interaction Data, which includes the websites you visited before and after visiting our website, products you viewed or searched for on our online services, length of visits to certain online pages, online page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouseovers), methods used to browse away from online pages, your interactions with our marketing emails (such as whether and when you opened an email from us, and whether you clicked a link in the email or forwarded the email), and your interactions with our online ads. Cookies and Related Technologies: We and our business partners may use cookies and other similar technologies such as pixel tags and web beacons to collect certain types of the Technical Data and Online Usage and Interaction Data described above as permitted by applicable law. For more information about the cookies and similar technologies we use, please see our How do we use Cookies in section 8 below.

No Children’s Information: Our online services are not intended for use by children under the age of 21. We do not knowingly register or otherwise collect personal information from any child under the age of 21 without the prior verifiable consent of the child's parent or guardian.

2. How We Use Information

We use the information we collect to conduct our business and to provide you with the best possible products, services, and experiences. The following categories of personal information are collected for the following purposes:

Contact Data to communicate with you, including about products and services you have ordered, or to send you updates about our products, services, or campaigns that may be of interest; or when you voluntarily enter to win a contest, sweepstakes or giveaway. Order Information and Account Data to create and manage your account on our website (for example to enable you to access, update and save your preferences to the account); fulfill your orders, including product customization requests. Favorites and Wine Alerts Data to provide you with the "Favorites" or "Wine Alerts" features of our online services, which allow you to identify and save products that you are interested in. Social Media Data to interact with you through our social media platforms; and administer social media marketing initiatives or social media advertising campaigns. Correspondence Data to respond to any specific queries when you contact customer service, to understand your preferences so that we can provide you with updates about our products, shipping methods, or services that may be of interest, provide you with a more tailored shopping experience when you arrive to our site, to administer sweepstakes and giveaways, or to improve our product offerings and customer experience based on your responses to a survey or product review. Technical Data and Online Usage and Interaction Data to provide, maintain, monitor, secure, debug, personalize and optimize our online services to and for you; provide you with customer service and technical assistance; and to generally develop and improve our products and services. We also use technical data that is automatically collected by cookies and related technologies to tailor our advertising and understand the effectiveness of our ads and social media campaigns. We also use your personal information for the following purposes (collectively, the "General Processing Purposes"), as permitted by applicable law:

Advertising and Marketing Activities: to provide you with relevant advertising and marketing communications, including updates on special offers or promotions, products and services that we believe you may be interested in, or to administer and let you know about events we believe you may be interested in. We may tailor the content of those communications based on our understanding of your preferences. Compliance with Laws: to perform activities necessary to ensure compliance with applicable national, state, provincial and other applicable laws, and to respond to requests from government authorities. Performance of Contracts: to perform our obligations and exercise our rights under our terms of use or any other agreement that you enter with us. Protection of Legal Interests: to protect our legal interests, such as in the event of a complaint or dispute. Merger or Sale: in the event that we, or some or all of our assets are acquired by or merged with a third-party entity or in connection with a prospective of completed merger, acquisition, sale, or other change of control, we may transfer some or all of the personal information that we have collected about you to another organization as part of that transaction. If we intend to transfer your personal information in connection with such a transaction, we may proceed with notice to you, grant you an opportunity to object, or seek your consent, as permitted or required by applicable law.

3. How We Share Information

In general, we do not share personal information about you with third parties for third-party marketing or advertising purposes. We may share personal information with the following types of third parties as permitted by applicable law:

Our service providers and business partners: we rely on affiliated and unaffiliated companies, agents and contractors to assist us with the provision of services and products to you, including: Online payment and fraud prevention service providers when you make a purchase; Delivery / logistics service providers, to deliver products you have purchased; Infrastructure and IT service providers, including cloud service providers to administer our website and your account if you register with us; Marketing, advertising and communications agencies to send you information about products and services that may be of interest to you; Providers of services related to some enhanced online features such as customer review or product recommendation engines; Advertising companies who help us provide tailored advertising and understand the effectiveness of our ads and traffic on our site; Providers of website testing / analytics services; or External auditors and advisers; We provide our service providers and business partners with access to your personal information so that they may provide services to us, subject to non-disclosure agreements and other data protection safeguards.

Third parties permitted or required by law: in certain circumstances, we may be permitted or required to disclose or share your personal information to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation. We may also disclose your personal information to third parties where disclosure is both legally permissible and necessary to protect or defend our rights, for law enforcement purposes, or to enforce our contracts or protect your rights. Third parties connected with business transfers: we may transfer your personal information to third parties in connection with a prospective of completed reorganization, restructuring, merger, acquisition or transfer of assets or other change in control, provided that the receiving party agrees to treat your personal information in a manner consistent with this privacy notice. Please note our online services may contain links to and from the websites of our partners or affiliates that are not owned or operated by us. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please review the privacy policies of third-party websites before you submit any personal information to them. We are not responsible for any privacy or security policies of these third-party sites.

4. How We Protect Information

We have implemented technical and organizational security measures intended to safeguard the personal information in our custody and control. Such measures include, for example, limiting access to personal information only to employees and authorized service providers who need to know such information for the purposes described in this privacy notice, as well as other administrative, technical and physical safeguards.

For example, when you place an order on www.Benchmarkwine.com, we use secure socket layer (SSL) technology, an encryption tool that provides security while transmitting information over the internet. We also use firewall technology, password controls, and other technological and procedural safeguards in respect of your online interactions with us.

While we endeavor to protect our systems, sites, operations and information against unauthorized access, use, modification and disclosure, due to the inherent nature of the internet as an open global communications vehicle and other risk factors, we cannot guarantee that any information, during transmission or while stored on our systems, will be absolutely safe from intrusion by others. We encourage you to take steps to help protect the confidentiality and security of your account and personal information, including by doing the following:

Reviewing your account periodically and immediately reporting any unexpected activity or unrecognized information; Installing the latest security updates and anti-virus software on your computer to help prevent malware and viruses; Using complex passwords (a minimum of 8 alpha/numeric cAsE sEnsitive characters including a $peci@l character); Not using the same password on more than one website; Not sharing your password with others; Password protecting your computer and mobile device; and Signing out/logging off of website sessions so that your session is closed, especially when using a public computer. You may come in contact with websites, emails, or texts that try to lure you into providing personal information with an offer such as a Benchmark Wine Group Gift Card. Benchmark does not sponsor or endorse these offers.

5. Your Choices and Rights

Update, Modify or Correct Your Information: We encourage you to contact us to update, modify or correct your personal information if it changes or if you believe that any information that we have collected about you is inaccurate. We may request information from you to honor your request, such as to ensure proper authentication or to verify the method to which the information was provided.

Rights under Applicable Privacy Laws: You may have rights under applicable privacy laws, including to access or erase certain personal information that we have about you, or restrict or object to certain activities in which we engage with respect to your personal information. To submit a request to exercise any such rights, please contact us using the details in section 7 below. If you are a resident of California, please also see our Supplemental California Privacy Policy in section 8 below.

6. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may change, modify, add, or remove portions of this privacy notice at any time, in which case we will provide individuals with notice of such updates where required by applicable law and then upload the updated privacy notice to our website www.benchmarkwine.com. You should check this page periodically for changes. Your continued use of our online services or any of the other services described in this privacy notice following the posting of changes to this privacy notice will be considered your consent to those changes.

7. Contact Us

To exercise any of your privacy rights, or if you have any questions or concerns regarding this privacy notice or the data processing practices outlined herein, including the manner in which we or our service providers treat your personal information, please contact us as follows:

by email: privacyrights@benchmarkwine.com by phone: 707.255.3500 by toll free number: 833.587.2173

8. How We Use Cookies

Like many other organizations, we use cookies or similar digital tracking technologies on our website for a number of purposes as set out below. Cookies (or other similar technologies) can be placed on our website by us or by third-party partners we engage for our purposes.

Third-party cookies may also be deployed on our behalf on third-party websites (e.g., to measure the effectiveness of ads). We respect applicable law about cookies. In particular, we use cookies only with your authorization where this is required by applicable law. In any case, you may opt-out from cookies at any time by changing your browser settings accordingly. However, as a consequence of opt-out, certain functions, portions or features of our website may cease working or may prevent you from fully benefiting of our online services.

Categories of cookies

Some cookies are deleted when you close down your browser. These are known as session cookies. Others remain on your device until they expire or you delete them from your cache. These are known as persistent cookies and these types enable us to remember things about you as a returning visitor. The main categories of cookies we use include:

Strictly necessary cookies: these cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around the website and use its features, and ensuring the security of your online transactions with us and online access to our website. Without these cookies, services you have asked for, such as completing a transaction, cannot be provided. These cookies don't gather information about you for the purposes of marketing. Performance cookies: these cookies allow us to count the number of visitors and collect information about how visitors use a web site, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. These cookies may collect the IP address of the device used to access the site. All information these cookies collect is used to improve how our website works and the user experience. By using our website, you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your device, however you can block these cookies using your browser settings (please see "how to manage your cookies" section below). Functionality cookies: these cookies allow us to recognize you when you return to our website and allows the website to remember choices you make (such as your user name). They may also be used to provide services you have requested such as watching a video. The information these cookies collect may include your IP address, but the cookie does not contain your name, address, account details, etc., and they do not track your browsing activity across other websites. By using our website, you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your device, however you can block these cookies using your browser settings (please see "how to manage your cookies" section below). First and third-party cookies: whether a cookie is a first- or third-party cookie depends on which website the cookie comes from. First-party cookies are those set by or on behalf of the website visited. All other cookies are third-party cookies. Targeting/Marketing cookies: these cookies make marketing and advertising content more relevant to you. We or a third-party advertising network that we work with may collect information relating to your browsing history and interests to deliver relevant advertising to you. The advertisement network partner may use marketing cookies, pixels or similar technologies to collect usage, navigational or other statistical data about your activities on our websites and mobile applications and other websites and apps (such as web pages you visit, ads you click on) and use this information to make predictions about your interests and provide you targeted advertising based upon your interests. These parties may also use this information to limit the number of times you see the same advertisement on our websites or mobile applications and to help measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. To learn more about your options and how to opt-out of interest-based advertising, please see "opting-out of interest-based advertising" under "how to manage your cookies" below. Personalization cookies: cookies may also be used on our website to personalize your shopping experience and enable you to use certain function (such as "add to Favorites" or "Save" certain preferences) to conduct internal testing on what works best for our customers. How to manage cookies: To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org. Alternatively, you can search the Internet for other independent information on cookies. Purposes of use of cookies

We use cookies for the following purposes:

Enable basic functioning of our website; Web analytics to improve our website (structure, features, accessibility and usability, content, or to fix any technical issues through gathering relevant technical data); Enable certain basic functions of online browsing and shopping with us (for example, save information you generated or provided on our website such as preferred items, items placed in the cart); To provide targeted advertising and monitor the effectiveness of our online ads and marketing (by recording your interactions with our ads on third-party websites, our social media platforms or our marketing emails); and Learn more about your preferences and internet browsing habits to provide you with tailored web-visit. Opting-out of Interest-Based Advertising: for more information about interest-based advertising and to understand your options, including how you can opt-out of receiving behavioral ads from participating third-party advertising companies, please visit the links below:

Network advertising initiative: http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/ Digital advertising alliance of us: http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ Please note that even if you opt-out of interest-based advertising by a third party, these tracking technologies may still collect data for other purposes including analytics and you will still see ads from us, but the ads will not be targeted based on behavioral information about you and may therefore be less relevant to you and your interests.

To successfully opt out, you must have cookies enabled in your web browser (see your browser's instructions for information on cookies and how to enable them). Your opt-out only applies to the web browser you use so you must opt-out of each web browser on each computer you use. Once you opt out, if you delete your browser's saved cookies, you will need to opt-out again.

9. State Specific Rights

If you are a resident of California, please also see our California Consumer Privacy Policy (CCPA) on the tab below.