Wine Club

Since tonight is February’s wine club I thought I’d share a little about the event!

One of my goals for myself for 2019 was to host a monthly get-together. Last year I (briefly) led a book club but it fizzled out pretty quickly as we realized that people didn’t have the time to find the same book and read it on the same timeline–especially because so many of us were trying to be economical and borrow the same one book from the library. But as much as I love reading, the thing that I loved the most about book club (or the idea of book club) is getting my friends together on a monthly basis and talking, eating, and drinking. Thus, wine club was born.

Wine club is essentially book club minus the books. No one has to feel guilty about not reading or not finishing the book and we still get to see each other once a month and drink wine! I’m also approaching it as an opportunity to try new recipes–some that are specifically for parties (like big batches I could never get through with just me and the finance) and some are things I’ve been wanting to try but haven’t had a reason to. Last month I picked up a few bottles of wine at Trader Joe’s and made a bunch of snacks and asked my friends to come prepared with some more wine.

Some things I made for January wine club:

• Chips and loaded guacamole
• Cheese plate
• Rosemary focaccia bread
• breadsticks (confession: I used pre-made Trader Joe’s pizza dough to make these)
• Chocolate chip cookies

January wine club was the first one and it was wildly successful! It’s the kind of recurring event that I always wanted to have when I grew up. My parents always had the house where people gathered, where my mom had (and still has, so many years later) a monthly book club, and where anyone was welcome. This is a bit harder to accomplish living in an apartment building in a city since it’s harder for people to just stop by unannounced so this event is a step in that direction. The fact that so many people I invited called or texted me to ask if they could bring their friend/roommate/brother/person whose couch they were sleeping on/person sleeping on their couch made me so happy.

Here’s to more successful wine clubs and beating January’s record of 11 bottles!

xoxo,
J