Most book clubs nowadays have a similar beginning and ending: Participants sign up eagerly awaiting their list of books to read and the discussions that will occur on an agreed upon date. Then life gets in the way. Maybe one or two will have time to finish the book, but some will never open it. By the time the book club meets, they may discuss the book, but they may also just pop open a bottle of wine and enjoy one another’s company.

Entertainer and author Sharon Glassman and vintner Candice Mohr came up with a solution to this common book club problem: The Lazy Person’s Book Club, which pairs an audio book with a special bottle of wine.

Glassman and Mohr met a year ago through mutual friends. Soon, Mohr invited Glassman to perform a few episodes from her novel, Blame It On Hoboken—which is part audio book, part musical, and part podcast—at Snowy Peaks Winery, owned by Mohr and her husband, in Estes Park. During one of Glassman’s performances, she noticed that Mohr had a sign on her bookshelf that proclaimed, “My book club drinks wine.” Glassman realized Mohr might be her dream partner in a venture that would liven up book clubs by connecting some of their essential features: entertainment, wine, and books.

Now, you can purchase a bottle of book club wine at Snowy Peaks or online. The wine, called Oso Rosé, is a Colorado-grown and produced, nontraditional dry rosé that comes with a QR code that takes the drinker/reader to a link with the audiobook. “People can sit back, drink in the book, while they sip this lovely, refreshing rosé, hang out with friends or—if you’re an introvert like me—hang out by yourself in your book club of one, and regardless have a lot of fun,” says Glassman.

blame-it-on-hoboken
Blame It On Hoboken is a new type of audiobook experience. Courtesy of Sharon Glassman

The audiobook, paired with the rosé, is certainly something to experience. Complete with sound effects, different actors/actresses, original songs, and corny interruptions and comments by “audience members,” Blame It On Hoboken is a dramatized romantic comedy mixed with a bit of mystery, a math formula for love, and ties to Frank Sinatra’s life. Rather than chapters, the audiobook is split into eight- or 10-minute episodes that also offer recaps, so it’s easy to jump back in.

“I call it a mood-boosting modern comedy, so I like to say my audience is optimistic nerds, of all kinds,” Glassman says. “It tends to make people smile and make people feel like they could be one of the characters in the story.”

Experience one of these episodes live and pick up your own “book of wine” (as Glassman calls it), at Snowy Peaks Winery on September 1. Glassman will be performing songs from the book club with her two-person band The Jamesons, while you sip on wine and taste snacks.

As Mohr and Glassman embark on this new venture, they did (laughingly) confess that neither have belonged to a book club. But they still get the gist—no one reads the books, but everyone drinks the wine.

(Go behind the vine at Snowy Peaks Winery.)

If you go: September 1, 4:30 P.M. to 6:30 P.M. at Snowy Peaks Winery, 292 Moraine Ave., Estes Park