Champagne, Tiaras, & Breathless Books: A Story for Women’s History Month
by Patricia V. Davis

Breathless Wines, a gold medal winning winery in Healdsburg, California, launched a program in December 2017 for wine lovers and book lovers, called Breathless Bubbles & Books. The concept is a simple but elegant one: a gift box pairing of award-winning, sparkling wine teamed with a fabulous book. Linda’s Book Obsession and Suzy Approved Book Reviews asked me how Breathless Bubbles & Books came to be.

It all started years ago, when Rebecca Rosenberg and I met at a writers’ conference organized by the Redwood Writers. We hit it off immediately. I love that Rebecca seizes life, celebrating the good and minimizing the bad. She and her husband Gary started Sonoma Lavender, a picturesque lavender farm deep in the heart of California Wine Country.

In 2013, I invited Rebecca to be a speaker at my Women’s Power Strategy Conference. It was around that same time that Sharon Cohn and her two sisters, Rebecca Faust and Cynthia Faust, started a wine label, Breathless Wines. They named the label “Breathless” in honor of their mother who taught them to celebrate the “breathless moments in life.” The sisters wanted to spark breathless moments in the lives of others with their lovely, sparkling wine.

Rebecca and Sharon knew each other from living in the same beautiful Sonoma community. Sharon offered to pour champagne at the after-party I was holding for all the speakers at my conference.

Yes, she poured ─ free of charge, I might add ─ fabulous, award-winning champagne for everyone at the party. I can still see it ─ Sharon in her Art Deco vintage dress, her lovely hat and jewelry ─ gracefully pouring champagne next to the beautiful Rebecca, who was of course, wearing lavender. I didn’t have a camera, but I sure wish I had. It was truly a breathless moment, a celebration of friendship and dynamic womanhood. Not to mention terrific outfits.

Isn’t this a great story so far?

It gets better. The three of us had talked about making available a fabulous box set featuring a book with breathless women characters, paired with a bottle of Breathless bubbly. We thought they’d make wonderful gifts for our favorite females for Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, birthdays, and holidays, don’t you agree?

On December 16, 2017, the pilot Bubbles & Books program launched at The Breathless Winery Open House, in Healdsburg, California, just in time for holiday giving. And on March 17, 2018, Rebecca and I will both be at the winery, for Breathless Wines Women’s History celebration. I’ll be signing copies of the first two books in my Secret Spice Café trilogy, Cooking for Ghosts and Spells and Oregano, and Rebecca will be signing copies of her historical fiction, The Secret Life of Mrs. London. Though our novels are quite different, they share some intriguing elements: magic, secrets, and daring female characters. There will be wine tastings, suffragette food created by Worth Our Weight, an Art Deco fashion contest, a Houdini magician, and fun giveaways.

But here’s where The Pulpwood Queens Book Club comes in. Kathy L. Murphy is another amazing female. She single-handedly founded this spectacular book club, the largest in the world, with over 700 branches. Kathy hand-selects the book club choices, with publishers vying to get their titles on her list. You can imagine how excited and honored I was when she chose Cooking for Ghosts and Spells & Oregano for her Pulpwood Queens list, but I got a bonus thrill when she also selected Rebecca’s novel, The Secret Life of Mrs. London.

In Kathy’s honor, for all she does for the world of literacy, when the Breathless Bubbles & Books website page launches on March 17, 2018 to coincide with the Women’s History Celebration taking place at the Breathless Wine Tasting Room, Breathless Wines will be donating five dollars of every Bubbles & Books gift box purchase to a Pulpwood Queens’ Book Club Scholarship. And the newly-added authors to the Breathless Bubbles & Books program have also been selected from The Pulpwood Queens Book Club Official list.

The titles available in Bubbles & Books will be (in alphabetical order):

Cooking for Ghosts (magical realism, contemporary fiction) by Patricia V. Davis
The Kabul Beauty School (adventure, travel) by Deborah Rodriguez
Kitchen Simplicity (philosophy, self-help) by Carmen Shenk (available May 1, 2018)
Mamma Mia: Americans Invade Italy (adventure, memoir) by Stephani Chance
The Pulpwood Queen’s Tiara- Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide to Life, (self-help, memoir release date to be announced)
The Secret Life of Mrs. London (historical fiction) by Rebecca Rosenberg
Since You’ve Been Gone (contemporary women’s fiction) by Christa Allan
Spells & Oregano (magical realism, contemporary fiction) by Patricia V. Davis
Wickwythe Hall (historical fiction) by Judithe Little

🎉Join the Breathless Bubbles & Books group on Facebook today !🎉