about

In 2011, my husband Kent and I spent a few weeks visiting wineries along two rivers in France.  Before then, we enjoyed wine and knew what we liked, but we didn’t know why.  It was a wonderful trip.  We met other people who loved wine, and everyone seemed to enjoy learning more about it. 

One group in particular from Arizona sparked our interest.  They were the officers of a wine club that met monthly and averaged 300 attendees.  What they did each month was nothing we were interested in, but putting together a wine club was a new idea we decided to try.

Being on the Board at the Summit Club in South Bend gave me many distributor contacts.  Jay Field was the first one we talked to.  We told him we wanted to start a group focused on wine education.  Jay was excited about the idea.

Our first “meeting” was in 2012.  It took us a couple of years to determine that the second Sunday of every other month worked best.   Jay did every wine club for the first two and a half years until one Sunday in November, when he was stuck in Indianapolis.  We had to quickly come up with something on our own.  Fortunately, we had enough bottles of wine in our cellar that we knew some information about, and the day was still a success. 

Soon, we realized we had more contacts eager to bring and present wine to our now-growing group.  We still owe Jay a great deal of gratitude for helping us get started.  We are also grateful that, even though he lives in Indianapolis now, he is still willing to bring us wine from time to time. 

The wine club has evolved over the years.  There was a time when our objective was to taste and learn about wine from one region and then go to that area to see where the grapes were grown and how the wine was made.  That was when we became The Traveling Vine.  Our best trip was a wonderful adventure in Italy.  A trip to France was planned for the Fall of 2020, but the pandemic put our plans on hold.  Stay tuned!

We are still looking forward to more trips in the future.

—Becky Bontreger