Auction Napa Valley brings in $5.7M, just 55% of 2008’s total

The Napa Valley Vintners’ annual charity gala, Auction Napa Valley, came up well short of last year’s record-setting $10.35 million haul, netting about $5.7 million over the weekend, in the latest sign of the recession’s continuing grip on the region.

That represented the lowest total since 2004, when the event raised $5.3 million, although it did manage to top the rival Naples (Florida) Winter Wine Festival, which earlier this year saw its take shrink from $14 million in 2008 to just $5 million, according to a report in Monday’s San Francisco Chronicle. The Chronicle's Jon Bonné also reported that for the first time in years the Napa Valley event didn’t sell out, and many vintners left early.

Funds raised at the 29th annual event, which had an entry ticket priced at $2,500 per person for the main Saturday auction, will support local health-care, youth and housing non-profit programs, according to organizers, who recapped the event Monday by saying that although “no records were broken, the mood was upbeat and lively.”

“We are thrilled to be able to continue to support our local charities,” Janet Trefethen, whose family chaired the Auction, said in a June 8 statement. The “outpouring of generosity from our bidders, vintners and community is heartwarming. Every dollar raised this weekend is one more than we had before for these organizations that need help.”

Early highlights of the four-day celebration included a faux train robbery on Thursday of the Napa Valley Wine Train and the $250 per person Taste Napa Valley food and wine extravaganza at the Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville last Friday, where bidding for 120 barrels of wine futures netted nearly $1.1 million. The top lot, attracting $45,000, included 10 cases of wine from cult winery Shafer Vineyards.

Sixty of the region’s top restaurants -- including The French Laundry, Meadowood Napa Valley, Bounty Hunter, Rutherford Grill, Bardesonno, and Mustards Grill among others -- participated, along with artisanal food purveyors and 100 wineries, according to Napa Valley Vintners.

A global online E-Auction, which started May 22, brought in bidders from as far away as China who battled in real-time on Friday with bidders on site at Robert Mondavi Winery. This year, organizers said, 111 lots were offered, with the top lot from Arietta Winery netting $13,500 for three six-liter bottles of wine.

Finally, at the main event Live Auction on Saturday “under the tent” at Meadowood Napa Valley, auctioneers Fritz Hatton and newbie Viveca Paulin Ferrell auctioned off 42 lots, with the top one raising $1.1 million raised for a tour of Napa Valley and Tuscany offered by Antica Napa Valley and Italy’s Antinori Family Wine Estate.

In addition, NVV said, a joint lot offered by Staglin Family Vineyards and HdV Wines netted $400,000 for a wine and travel package in France’s Burgundy region when Hudson Vineyards’ owner Lee Hudson and former Symantec CEO John Thompson joined forces.

Still, many lots were bargains compared with prior years, such as a Screaming Eagle package that went for $80,000 this year, as opposed to half a million dollars a year ago.

Even so, “It was important for our community overall that the Auction go on as planned,” said Paula Kornell, the NVV’s president, adding that it helped to prop up spirits in the local wine world while supporting charities and the region’s hospitality industry as well.

Dennis Cakebread, co-owner of Napa Valley’s Cakebread Cellars, said that despite the difficult economy, “everybody was in pretty good spirits,” insisting that $5 million is a lot of money to raise for Napa Valley charities, “so you have to put it in that perspective.”

Cakebread, who’s in charge of sales and marketing for the family-owned winery, noted that experienced winemakers are used to battling both economic twists and turns and potentially difficult weather conditions, and “it turns out there are lots of things we can’t control, and I guess you get used to that.”