Are You In A Club?

I am in a wine club. Many of my friends are in book clubs or bunko groups that are fairly serious groups. Some are serious about the food that goes along with the gathering, while others enjoy vigorous conversation around a book or a game that may or may not be of interest. While I love to read, I find it hard to read a book that has been prescribed so I have always avoided joining such a club.

One day my husband came home and mentioned a group from his office were forming a wine club. It is not your usual wine club. Most of us know very little about wine but all of us enjoy wine or we enjoy learning about the region where the wine is grown. So we decided to get together in club members' homes to share delicious food, taste wines and get to know one another. In wine club, several cultures are represented which has been an huge enhancement. For the first year we used a book to guide us and chapter-by-chapter, we learned about things like legs and how to taste a wine. With enough information to make us dangerous, wine club continued focusing on different wine-growing regions in the world. Over time some of the group started traveling to a few of the regions that grow wines. I didn't go on the last trip but this Spring, seven of the wine club members decided to go to the south of France. Last year's trip was Spain.

This past weekend we shared slide shows and enjoyed foods from the region while tasting 10 different bottles of chateauneuf du pape. It has been such a wonderful experience to be able to get together with a group of people that I know only through an interest in learning about wines. When I get home from a wine club gathering, I always feel that, at least for the evening, I have been traveling.

Interesting note: One of our wine club members worked in Europe as a distributor from the early 60s to the mid 80s. In his dealings with some of the wine suppliers, specifically the Rothschilds, he acquired about thirty years of the wine labels created by some amazing artists. To learn more about the artist labels click here http://www.theartistlabels.com/mouton/1973.html