Why do the guys get to have all the clubs?

We’re all older. Many of us are married. We’re gainfully employed. We’re starting families and taking on mortgages. But, somehow, only the men get to socialize like it’s 1999.

College fraternities seamlessly transform into fantasy football leagues, secret societies, Thursday nights out at“gentlemen’s clubs” and the like.

We ladies? The sorority scene disappears after graduation day (I’m okay with that, by the way). But then the Tennis Club and the Drama Club and the Die-Hard-Fans-of-Jane-Austen Club are also disbanded and we’re left with… The Dirty Dishes Club? The Grocery Shopping Club? The Pick-Up-The-Underpants-In-The-Middle-Of-The-Floor Club?

Well that just didn’t seem right to me. I’m a woman with interests. I want to get together with the girls and discuss more than Pampers and Pottery Barn Kids and pre-K admissions. Yes, I’m a broad-minded gal interested in… good wine and… very good wine.

What did I feel compelled to do? Start a club with my girlfriends and fellow mommies–most, still working full time while raising their tiny bundles and tending to their husbands–that would let us talk, sip and linger longer than we’re allowed at a Downtown Manhattan restaurant. (Another high-minded pursuit of ours is to pinpoint the best Sancerre with the lowest price point. So far, Trader Joe’s is the surprising front-runner with Domaine Jean-Paul Balland Sancerre, 2009, $17.99; citrus and stone fruit tartness with a bone-dry, minerally finish)

The Wine O Club was born mid-winter and now she’s thriving.

We ladies could care less about sports but put a good bottle of Provencal rose’/Sancerre/Friulano in front of us and our faces light up, the screaming children disappear and the evening is a cause for celebration much like the half-off summer shoe sale at Saks.

For our first warm-weather meeting last week, we convened on my good friend Lauren’s rooftop at sunset and watched the day’s 95 degree sun tuck behind the Flatiron Building and dip below the Hudson River. To keep us going in between the tastings–“The hubbies can tuck in the kiddos! We must forge ahead and taste another Sancerre!”– I brought the Blue Cheese Apple Walnut Spread (pg 46) from the cookbook. The salty, pungent cheese and the apples were a great foil for the crisp, bone-dry Loire Valley white wines.

What will the July meeting bring? Hopefully half a case of wine, another good recipe from the cookbook and great stories from the trenches (the trenches being Mommyhood and Manhattan, of course).

Photo by Colleen Duffley