Wining and Dining

Julie Brosterman’s most vivid memories take place around a table. Sometimes there’s a view, say, of the Tuscan countryside or the Eiffel Tower, but always there’s a fabulous meal and great wine.

As a business development consultant during the dot-com boom, Brosterman enjoyed closing deals around a table; she took pleasure in commanding a wine list and taking control of what was typically thought of as a “man’s role.”

But whereas Brosterman had no compunction asking for the wine list at a table of suits after all wine has been her hobby for 25 years, ever since her days as a “pour girl” for Kevin Zraly’s illustrious Windows on the World Wine School most of the women she knew demurred to their husbands or lovers when it came to the grape. Some were even too daunted to enter a wine shop, opting to buy wine at the supermarket with no more knowledge of wine pairing than the out-dated formula: red for meat, white for fish.

Brosterman took her love of wine, combined it with the growing trend toward upscale, all-women travel experiences and started Women & Wine, a travel company that specializes in wine and travel for women. Partnered with Omega World Travel, Women & Wine customizes itineraries for groups of gal pals to wine destinations around the world, such as Sonoma, Calif., Argentina, France and Australia. All trips are accompanied by a female wine educator and include visits to wineries that feature female owners or winemakers.

Women & Wine also puts together groups of interested solo travelers and sends them off on set itineraries, such as a wine, art and architecture trip to Napa Valley, Calif., or a wine, wellness and shopping trip to Umbria, featuring excursions to Italy’s designer outlets.

The cost of both customized and organized itineraries is about $995 per day, per person, except for travel to and from the destination. This all-inclusive trip includes top-of-the-line accommodations, food, wine, chauffeured transportation, excursions to local museums and attractions and spa treatments.

On a recent Women & Wine weekend to the suddenly trendy Santa Ynez Valley in California, six women who knew each other from their kids’ Pasadena pre-school ditched their families and joined Brosterman and co-founder, Lisa Kring, for a couple of days of wining and dining.

“It’s the antithesis of the ‘Sideways’ tour, where the guys go out, get drunk and pick up babes,” Brosterman quipped.

The customized itinerary which included a visit to Lotusland in Montecito, a 37-acre, over-the-top botanical garden created by a Polish opera singer, and a whale-watching catamaran cruise culminated in a birthday celebration for one participant.

The group stayed at the Five-Diamond Simpson House Inn, an elegant bed and breakfast secluded on an acre of English gardens, right in the heart of Santa Barbara (see sidebar).

The first evening the group congregated at the Wine Cask, an up-market wine store and restaurant where, over champagne, wine director Wendy Van Horn explained the best way to build and nurture a relationship with one’s local wine merchant. A gourmet dinner, accompanied by local wines selected by Van Horn and Kring, was held in a private dining room at the back of the shop. As they tasted wine, the women were joined by several of the featured winemakers.

The following day was spent in the Santa Rita Hills. At the old Sanford-Benedict Winery’s majestic barn, with views of the vines for as far as the eye can see, the women tasted wines made by some of the area’s finest winemakers who also happen to be women. In a riotous demonstration, the elegant Pasadena ladies later learned how to “spit” wine right out the barn door.

In-room massages helped the ladies segue into that evening’s birthday dinner celebration. Later, they gathered in the Simpson House parlor in their PJs for a port tasting and a toast that next year would find them all reunited on another Women & Wine excursion in an even more exotic locale.

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