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My niece Kristin Puccini loves all things Italian: Italian culture, food, wine and fashion. Over the Christmas holiday she shared with me that she is studying hospitality at the University of Rome. She also mentioned that she was going to start “Tra Amici” a virtual monthly supper club whereby she will be exploring Italy and highlighting the culture, food and wine within each region- there are 20 in all. I mentioned to her this was a formidable task! There are over 500 registered grape varietals in Italy, with over 350 grape varietals acknowledged by the Italian Government!

Her passion for Italy and her supper club project started me thinking about doing the same for France. After completing my WSET Level 3 certificate about a year ago, I am in the throws of completing my French Wine Scholar certificate. A light bulb went on! What a great way to do a deeper dive into French wines and explore its regional cuisines. Additionally, I love to cook, have many friends who love to cook, have many guests that come to our winery who regularly ask me when the next cooking class will be – why not combine all of these and have some fun in the process? I am not a professionally trained chef by any stretch of the imagination, however, I have always enjoyed cooking and when I designed our winery’s hospitality space, we did install a professional kitchen to accommodate room for students, caterers and future whims. So I guess this supper club idea falls into the later category – a “whim”.

There are 13 Départments and 60 acknowledged grape varietals in France – my goal over the course of 2025 will be to highlight each region, it’s cuisine and wines through the Domaine Artefact Supper Club. We will use organic ingredients that are sourced locally (some hopefully from our gardens) and raised sustainably. When a specialty item is needed, I have no hesitation going to “the source” (especially for French cheese!).

My husband and I own a vineyard and winery that specializes in Rhône varietals so I may highlight/compare and contrast an old world French wine with one of our wines when we get into the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Departments. The goal is to enjoy this experience, celebrate our Supper Club community, hone our wine palates and explore regional cuisines.

I can’t do this alone! I am enlisting the help of our Substack community, my Francophile friends, amateur food and wine lovers to research, cook and devour our efforts. I will share our experiences, failures and successes from our monthly “suppers”.

Here is my planned 2025 line up ~

January: Bretagne (key city is Rennes)

February: Normandie (key city is Rouen)

March: Hauts-de-France (key city is Lille)

April: Grand Est (key city is Strasbourg)

May: Pays de la Loire (key city is Nantes)

June: Occitanie (key city is Toulouse)

July: Provence-Alps-Côte-d’Azure (key city is Marseille)

August: Corse (key city is Ajaccio)

September: Nouvelle-Aquitaine (key city is Bordeaux)

October: Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (key city is Orleans)

November: Centre-Val de Loire (key city is Dijon)

December: Bourgogne-Franche-Comté (key city of Lyon) and the Ile-de-France (key city of Paris)

Please join us on this journey ~ Cheers!