Book Clubs are Meeting in Wine Country
The Mills Book Club was established in 1989 by Librarian Kris, long before book clubs were as popular as they are now. Today, book clubs are flourishing among friends and neighbors all over the world. Perhaps it was the Mills Book Club that set the trend for book club proliferation! The Mills Book Club is setting another trend these days, holding a book club meeting in wine country. The Mills Book Club has been doing this for the past six years.
It began in 2012 when Mills Book Club member Pat thought it would be fun to hold a book club meeting at her summer getaway home in Healdsburg, CA. The book club enjoyed the event so much that they decided to make this an annual affair and host the meeting at a winery. It seems that to sip wine and discuss books in the peace of wine country brings much joy to the book club. The club picks small wineries, preferably family-owned, and ones where the winemaker or winery owner has time to meet with the book club.
The Mills Book Club wineries
- Teldeschi Vineyards – 2013
- Ketcham Estate Winery in 2014
- Fritz Underground Winery– 2015
- Lytton Ridge Winery– 2016
- Battaglini Winery – 2017
The Battaglini Winery is a terrific winery stop in the Russian River Valley of Sonoma County. Owner and winemaker Joe Battaglini gave us a walking tour and showed us 135-year-old Zinfandel and Petite Sirah vines. His small but quaint tasting room is filled with memorabilia and good cheer. While we were busy tasting, a couple visiting from Florida came into the tasting room. Upon leaving, the woman said “This is so much fun. Yesterday we were in Napa at a snobby tasting room where the winery was selling $100 Cabernet. Who needs a hundred-dollar bottle of wine?” Certainly not the Mills Book Club members!
The Mills Book Club meets once a month, and members are mostly retired teachers from Mills High School in Millbrae. A few still teach there and a few others are close friends who wanted to be part of the book club environment. In case you are wondering what the Mills Book Club reads, the following is a list of recent books they have read.
Latest Choice:
Recent favorites:
- Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
- The Underground Railroad (Pulitzer Prize Winner) (National Book Award Winner) (Oprah’s Book Club): A Novel
- American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst
- Everything I Never Told You
- The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
- West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life
- Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love
- The Little Paris Bookshop: A Novel
Ha! Looks like all of the best things in life: good friends, special times together, books to stretch the mind, fine wine and all repeated often. Thanks for the article and photo. KC