What we’re about
Hello Wineauxs!
We are a fun group of wine loving, book loving, aged 35+ (like a fine wine) group of people. We would love for you to join us. Here's one of the many activities we have planned each month....
Monthly Book Club - Every month we meet at a local wine shop in Scottsdale where we have a curated wine tasting based on the theme of that month's book. We discuss the book, drink wine, laugh and have fun. I promise you will meet a new friend at this book club!
Buzz Books & Bubbles - This small group spinoff meets once a month at a wine bar as we discuss a buzzy book of the moment (usually a newly released book) while sipping on champagne or you drink of choice. Great for avid readers who want to read more than one book a month.
The Capote Brunch Society - This is a spinoff of our book club where we meet for brunch and like Truman Capote and his swans we discuss a long form article that I provide to you prior to the brunch (think Anna Delvey fake heiress type stories).
Beginning in February 2025 - The Literary Wineaux Society will be a fee-based membership. All new members will receive a 30-day trial. The annual dues are just $10 per year. You can pay via Meetup or you can pay me directly via Venmo, PayPal, Zelle or Apple Cash. and I'll update your membership manually.
Wineaux Rules: please kindly cancel your RSVP ahead of meetup time if unable to make it to allow for the waitlist to open up. Thank you.
Upcoming events (4)
See all- LWS July Book Club: 'We Might Just Make It After All' by Elyce AronsMise en place , Scottsdale, CA
It was a close one! We had to do a LIVE vote, and some y'all need to be audited for stealing votes lol, but thanks to ELLEN! and her tie-breaking vote - July's Book Club selection is...
We Might Just Make It After All: My Best Friendship with Kate Spade by Elyce Arons (non-fiction) - A memoir that details the friendship that began in college and went on to become co-founders of the multi-billion dollar fashion company as they came of age in 1990s New York. Arons first met Katy Brosnahan in a University of Kansas dorm room, she had no idea that this polo-shirt wearing Missouri girl would not only become her best friend, but also change the course of her life. Within a decade they'd be scraping by in NYC, working day jobs to spend nights building a new line of handbangs that would one day revolutionize the accessories industry. Amazon Link
Page Count: 304 pages
Audiobook: 9 hours, 25 minutes narrated by author
Published: July 17, 2025⚠️ Please be aware of trigger warnings. Content will include talk of suicide.
Further Reading and Viewing....
This tiktok video (which you can stream via YouTube) was what prompted me to research Elyce Arons after she gave a home tour of her inspiring West Village, NYC apartment, bursting with personality.
- Video: Good Morning America Interview with Elyce Arons
- Read: Town & Country Magazine - Why I had to tell the story of my best friend Kate Spade
- Read: Marie Claire - Elyce Arons Hopes You Remember Kate Spade as She Does
Location: Mise En Place, Scottsdale.
Wine Tasting Details: $25 per person includes a guided tasting of 4-5 wines with a charcuterie platter to share.
RSVP: Please make sure to update your RSVP. Be courteous! - Jetsetting Wineauxs: Passport To Germany (Wine Tasting)Hidden Track Bottle Shop, Phoenix , AZ
Hello Wineauxs!
We're taking flight again and this time to Deutschland (Germany) !!
Jetsetting Wineauxs: Wineauxs Around the World
- I've teamed up with Craig over at Hidden Tracks to take us on an adventure in wine each time focused on a different country or wine region. Here's how this event will work...- Bring your play passport you received at last month's wine-tasting event. If you're new to this event I will gift you a passport (play passport) and I will stamp it with the country's stamp. Craig will guide us through the tasting by educating us on the wines, the region and so much more.
What will you share? Each person must bring an interesting factoid about the country -- arts, culture, politics, scandal, history, anything you find that can contribute to being immersed in the country. You will have up to two minutes to share your facts. Here are some examples:
- origin of a famous dish or chef
- Historical figures in politics
- famous personalities, actors, performers
- seldom heard facts on historical landmarks
- Art and artists, books/authors
- scandals, true crime
- trends and movements - political/religious/fashion/architecture
- please do not bring any facts about wine specifically; stories about wine are fine.
Here are the details:
Destination: Germany 🇩🇪
Wine Tasting Cost: $25 (paid at tasting)
A guided tasting of wines
Paired bites
Location: Hidden Tracks Bottle Shop (Uptown Phoenix). The wine tasting will be indoors due to summer temps.I am opening this up to 20 people. So I encourage you to sign up and experience our fourth destination of the Jetsetting Wineauxs Experience. Craig is an awesome host and is excited to put this on for us.
- Buzz Books & Bubbles: 'Atmosphere' by Taylor Jenkins ReidNeeds location
Here it is. The reason that Buzz Books & Bubbles was started in the first place so we could read.....'Atmosphere' by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Author of the blockbuster bestselling books -- 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo' and 'Daisy Jones & The Six'
GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • From the #1 New York Times bestselling author comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.
“Thrilling . . . heartbreaking . . . uplifting . . . the fast-paced, emotionally charged story of one ambitious young woman, finding both her voice and her passion.”—Kristin Hannah, author of The Women
“NASA? Space missions? The ’80s? This is a collection of all the things I love.”—Andy Weir, author of Project Hail Mary and The Martian
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.
Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.
As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.
Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.
Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love—this time among the stars. Amazon Link
Page Count: 352 pages
Audiobook: 9 hours, 52 minutes
Published: June 3, 2025Location: TBA
Not open - LWS August Book Club: Theme : 'Italian Summer' - VOTE NOW!!!!Mise en place , Scottsdale, CA
We're taking our August book club to the Italian coast (not literally, someday guys!) with our theme Italian Summer. The following seven nominees all take place in gorgeous Italian landscapes -- from Tuscany to Rome to the Amalfi Coast. Which book will you choose to transport you to one of the most beautiful (and delicious) places on earth?
Please cast your vote in the comments below by July 27. Note: August Book Club will be held in September. Selection will be announced at July's Book Club meeting. I've added Amazon Links for further research and uploaded the book covers in photos.
p.s. some titles have changed since the live announcement and will be saved for another month.
And the nominees are.....
1. 'The Amalfi Curse' by Sarah Renner - (author of 'The Lost Apothecary') - Powerful witchcraft. A hunt for sunken treasure. Forbidden love on the high seas. Beware the Amalfi Curse…Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But Haven is hoping to find more than old artifacts beneath the azure waters; she is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon Haven’s arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work? Amazon Link
2. 'The View From Lake Como' by Adriana Trigiani - Jess Capodimonte Baratta is not living the life of her dreams. Not even close. In blue-collar Lake Como, New Jersey, family comes first. Recently divorced from Bobby Bilancia, “the perfect husband," Jess moves into her parents’ basement to hide and heal. Jess is also a talented draftswoman in the marble business. Fueled by her lost dreams, Jess takes fate into her own hands and escapes to her ancestral home, Carrara, Italy. From the shadows of the majestic marble-capped mountains of Tuscany, to the glittering streets of Milan, and on the shores of enchanting Lake Como (the other one), Jess begins to carve a place in this new/old world. Amazon Link
3. 'Salt Water' by Katy Hays - In 1992, Sarah Lingate is found dead below the cliffs of Capri, Italy, leaving behind her three-year-old daughter, Helen. Despite suspicions that the old-money Lingates are involved, Sarah’s death is ruled an accident. And every year, the family returns to prove it’s true. But on the thirtieth anniversary of her death, the Lingates arrive at the villa to find a surprise waiting for them—the necklace Sarah was wearing the night she died. Haunted by the specter of that night, the paranoid, insular Lingate family begins to crack, and the investigation into Sarah’s death is reopened. Everyone who was on Capri thirty years ago remains a suspect. Amazon Link
4. 'Tartufo' by Kira Jane Buxton - After nearly losing the election to a geriatric donkey, newly installed Mayor Delizia Miccuci can’t help but feel like the sun has finally set on the rural Italian village of Lazzarini Boscarino. Tourists only stop by to ask for directions, Nonna Amara’s cherished ristorante is long shuttered, and the town hall is disgustingly overrun with glis glis poo—even Postman Duccio has been disgraced. All that’s left is Bar Celebrità, a rustic establishment where weary locals gather to quibble over decades-long disputes, submit their poor stomachs to bartender Giuseppina’s volcanic espresso, and wonder what will become of the place where together they’ve spent their entire lives. Little do the villagers know that local truffle hunter Giovanni Scarpazza has just happened upon something that could change everything. A truffle—un tartufo, that is—sits beneath the soil with the power to either be the greatest gift or the foulest curse the village has ever seen. Amazon Link
5. 'Dolce Vita Confidential: Fellini, Loren, Pucci, Paparazzi, and the Swinging High Life of 1950s Rome' by Shawn Levy - (non-fiction) In the dizzying wake of World War II, Rome skyrocketed to prominence as an epicenter of film, fashion, photography, and boldfaced libertinism. Artists, exiles, and a dazzling array of movie talent rushed to Rome for a chance to thrive in this hotbed of excitement. From the photographers who tailed the stars to the legends who secured their place in cinematic fame, Dolce Vita Confidential resurrects the drama that permeated the streets and screens of Rome. Amazon Link.
6. 'Room on the Sea: Three Novellas' by André Aciman - From the author of 'Call Me By Your Name' comes three stories -- two set in Italy and one in New York. The short fictions deal with the heart-wrenching vicissitudes of amorous ambivalence, in André Aciman's inimitably nostalgic, lyric style."The Gentleman from Peru" tells the story of the life-changing encounter of a group of friends with an enigmatic solitary guest in a hotel on the Amalfi Coast. "Room on the Sea" is a dialogue between a man and a woman who meet on jury duty and embark on a complex relationship. "Mariana" is a modern retelling of a famous seventeenth-century novel about a love affair between a nun and a swashbuckling, unreliable aristocrat. No one writes about the ups and downs, the yeses and nos, of contemporary love like Aciman. As The Times (London) writes: ”You don't so much read André Aciman's novels as tumble breathlessly into them.“ Amazon Link
7. 'The Villa' by Rachel Hawkins - As kids, Emily and Chess were inseparable. But by their 30s, their bond has been strained by the demands of their adult lives. So when Chess suggests a girls trip to Italy, Emily jumps at the chance. Villa Aestas in Orvieto is a high-end holiday home now, but in 1974, it was known as Villa Rosato, and rented for the summer by a notorious rock star, Noel Gordon, up-and-coming musician, Pierce Sheldon, and Pierce’s girlfriend, Mari, and her stepsister, Lara. There, Mari writes one of the greatest horror novels of all time, and the summer ends with Pierce’s brutal murder. As secrets from the past come to light, equally dangerous betrayals from the present also emerge––and it begins to look like the villa will claim another victim before the summer ends. Inspired by Fleetwood Mac, the Manson murders, and the infamous summer Percy and Mary Shelley spent with Lord Byron at a Lake Geneva castle––the birthplace of Frankenstein––The Villa welcomes you into its deadly legacy. Amazon Link
