A Crush of Charitable Activity

Wine makers help variety of groups, local and global, perform good works

Miljenko Grgich skipped this month’s Napa Valley Wine Auction, the annual three-day extravaganza in which well-to-do people from around the world spend barrels of cash to be wined and dined in a bucolic setting and then bid on rare vintages and other assorted luxuries — with millions in proceeds going to local charities.

Instead, Mr. Grgich (pronounced Gur-gitch), owner of Grgich Hills Cellars, has spent the last

six weeks in his native Croatia, tending a small winery he owns and cultivating a new philanthropic project — a charity called Roots of Peace that is working to clear minefields and replant the land with grapevines and other agricultural crops.

The charity has raised more than $200,000 from numerous other noted wineries, including Beringer, Gallo of Sonoma, J Wine Company, and Robert Mondavi, as well as from several high-technology companies based in nearby Silicon Valley.

The organization has also received $500,000 in services from another high-technology company that wants to help the charity improve its mine-clearing techniques.

The “mines to vines” project, as it is also known, is but one example of how vintners’ philanthropy is growing.

Wine auctions and tastings that raise money for charity and lift the profiles of individual wineries have long been popular. But in recent years, more and more of the people and companies associated with America’s wine industry have begun to branch out in their philanthropy, aligning themselves with diverse causes such as the arts, breast cancer, and mental health.

No figure is available for how much the industry, which had $18-billion in sales nationwide last year, donates to charity. But a recent study in California — the nation’s largest wine-producing state — found that wineries and wine-grape growers in that state contributed $62-million to charity in 1999.

That figure doesn’t take into account the donations from vintners who have made vast fortunes from the wine industry’s rapid expansion. Robert Mondavi, founder of the company that bears his name, has donated more than $30-million to charity, for example.

The booming economy has been helping wine sales soar, and nowhere is that more evident than here in the Napa Valley, widely considered to be the nation’s premier wine-growing region, with nearly 300 wineries.

The Napa Valley Wine Auction has raised a total of $30-million in the 20 years it has been held, primarily for local health-care charities. This year alone, the event raked in $9.5-million — nearly double last year’s total of $5.5-million. It has inspired dozens of similar events from Washington State to Atlanta.

In one of the most ambitious philanthropic efforts ever mounted in the area, the American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts is seeking to raise $70-million for an 80,000-square-foot cultural and education institution being built on the banks of the Napa River.

Many other charities in the Napa Valley have flourished thanks to the largesse of the wine industry. In St. Helena, the Boys & Girls Club and the local Montessori school each raise close to $200,000 through their own wine auctions.

The Napa Valley Symphony Orchestra has seen contributions double within the last three years, from $300,000 to $680,000 this year, says Ernest Phinney, development director.

And the Community Foundation of the Napa Valley, which was started in 1994, has seen its assets grow by 400 percent just in the last year, to $7-million.

“We are in a growth pattern that has no precedent,” says Patricia Struntz, the executive director.

Not that the valley is Shangri-la for everybody. Restrictive zoning laws designed to preserve the region’s rural and agricultural character mean cheap land and housing are increasingly hard to come by. What’s more, proposals to build low-cost housing are often met with strenuous resistance from residents. In many cases, the thousands of people employed in the hospitality industry, serving as waiters or chambermaids, cannot afford to live close to work and must commute from outside the county.

“There is the tourist’s Napa Valley, and then there is Napa County,” says Ms. Struntz. “We see a huge train of headlights coming into the valley every day over Highway 12. These are all people coming to work here, but they cannot live here.”

Msgr. John Brenkle, of St. Helena Catholic Church, who runs a program that helps find temporary housing for the 2,000 to 4,000 men who flood the region during harvest season to pick grapes, says, “It’s falling upon philanthropy and the industry to come up with providing sufficient housing.”

He sees some promising signs. Last year, for the first time, beneficiaries of the Napa wine auction included three groups that provide low-cost permanent or temporary housing.

When Monsignor Brenkle, who counts numerous vintners among his parishioners, approached them to help raise $25,000 to qualify for a matching foundation grant to build low-cost housing, wine companies and executives came up with $470,000.

Robert Mondavi, one of the few wineries that offer farmworker housing on their property, has turned its 52-bed facility over to Monsignor Brenkle’s group for $1 a year. The winery, whose vast operations now require year-round farmworker help, was no longer using the facility for its own workers.

The vintners are also considering imposing a voluntary $10-per-acre tax on themselves, and donating the $200,000 to $300,000 that would be raised annually toward providing farmworker housing.

“The climate is changing,” says Monsignor Brenkle. “Recognition of the needs of farmworkers is very real and has risen in the consciousness of the valley.”

Many wineries — especially small operations — still don’t go much beyond giving selected bottles to fund-raising auctions. Some, however, have made philanthropy an integral part of the business.

At Sutter Home, the nation’s fourth-largest winery — producing 13 million cases of wine each year — philanthropy is very much a family affair.

Co-owner Vera Trinchero Torres, who together with her two brothers, Bob and Roger, inherited the business from their parents, is in charge of giving.

The company donates about $500,000 a year in cash and wine to mostly local causes, right down to paying funeral expenses for local families who cannot afford the cost.

“We’ve been talking about maybe establishing some sort of a foundation,” Ms. Torres says. “But we’ve been so hands-on since the days when we were a mom-and-pop winery that there are certain things that we would rather have complete control over rather than passing it on to a committee.”

At Beringer Wine Estates, which became a public corporation in 1997, efforts are just getting under way to consolidate the philanthropy at the company’s six wineries, says its spokeswoman, Phyllis Turner.

Each of the wineries holds spring and fall “wine opener” festivals, raising thousands of dollars for local beneficiaries such as the public schools or the local chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Even when the company’s philanthropy is consolidated, it will remain largely up to the individual wineries to choose their beneficiaries for such events.

Recently, Beringer gave a $1-million gift to the American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts. And, like many wineries, the company makes an annual donation to the viticulture and enology department at the University of California at Davis, and to the American Vineyard Foundation, which raises money for research in wine-grape growing and winemaking.

“That’s a logical thing for the wine industry to do,” Ms. Turner says, “to feed its own education.”

The Chalone Wine Group, a company of nine wineries in California, Washington State, and France, has gone a step further. Two years ago, its chairman and retired chief executive, Phil Woodward, started the Chalone Wine Foundation, which donates about $75,000 worth of wine a year to charity auctions. It also raises money for and provides scholarships to students of viticulture, enology, and the culinary arts, and awards grants to charities in the areas where the company’s wineries are located. It recently donated $150,000 to the American Center, and $100,000 to the Napa Valley Opera House.

Instead of having to dodge or turn down the ever-growing number of requests for wine donations, Mr. Woodward says, “we openly solicit our shareholders who are involved in non-profit organizations to give our wines to those organizations for fund-raising purposes.”

But beyond the wine, the company makes no donations to the foundation, which currently has about $1-million in its coffers. Instead, Mr. Woodward raises money by auctioning off exclusive items during the company’s annual shareholder meetings, such as lunch at Chateau Lafite Rothschild, and by arranging lavish trips to the wine regions of France, Italy, or elsewhere. The trips, which typically sell for $8,000 to $10,000 a person, do not include airfare, “but they do include some pretty fantastic wine,” Mr. Woodward says. The trips are so popular that the foundation is now organizing five each year.

As the industry continues to prosper, Mr. Woodward says, he hopes that more in the business will look for ways to turn wine into cash for charity.

“Clearly we’ve got a product that is conducive to fund raising,” he says. “And we’re just getting started.”

For a glimpse into what philanthropy in the wine region may look like in the future, here’s a look at the giving by some of the key players in Napa’s giving:

Robert Mondavi: Philanthropy’s Leader

Together with his wife, Margrit, the undisputed dean of philanthropy in the Napa Valley is Mr. Mondavi, who is widely credited with leading the transformation of the valley from a rural farming community into a premier wine-producing region.

“The Mondavis have no peers,” says Stephen Thomas, director of the Oxbow School, which was built with the help of $4-million from the couple. The school runs a one-semester fine-arts program for high-school juniors from across the country, and the Mondavis have provided an additional $2-million so low-income Napa County students can participate in the program.

Many of Mr. and Mrs. Mondavi’s other donations have also gone toward the cultural enrichment of the Napa Valley. For 35 years, they have sponsored an annual music festival at the winery to benefit the Napa Valley Symphony Orchestra. The festival now raises about $100,000 a year.

In 1997, they donated $2-million toward an effort to restore the Napa opera house, a project that had been languishing, and promised to increase their contribution by $250,000 if an additional $2-million was raised within a year. It was.

But Mr. Mondavi’s biggest project by far is the American Center, through which he hopes to realize his lifelong dream of educating the public about the virtues of good wine and good food, and their ability to “elevate the human spirit.”

On a recent spring morning, Mr. Mondavi, sitting in his low-slung office at the mission-style winery on Route 29, with its famous bell tower and arched entryway that seems to beckon to motorists to stop in for a tour and a tasting, is a testament to the good life he so fervently espouses.

He is tanned, with white hair and a high-pitched, hoarse voice that is filled with a boundless enthusiasm that belies his 87 years.

He hopes, he says, that the American Center will endure far longer than he — “for 1,000 years or more.”

Mr. Mondavi says that, as a student at Stanford University in the 1930’s, he was shocked to see how his classmates abused beer and jug wine. “I had wine all my life,” he says. “Never did I see my mother or father abuse it.” He adds: “I want to educate the world that wine in moderation is good for you. I want to show the world that by combining wine, food, and the arts, you can enhance the quality of life.”

Some have criticized the project as less than philanthropic and more of a monument to his own achievements and yet another way to promote the wine industry.

Arianna Huffington, the syndicated columnist, says, “This wine and food center is really an extension of making the good times a little better for those who are already participating in it.” She adds: “It’s not going to address the major issues that we are facing, and which frankly we are really turning a blind eye to as a culture.”

Local critics, meanwhile, have fretted that the center will attract more tourists to an area whose two-lane roads are already clogged with five million visitors each year — second only to Disneyland in tourist volume in the state.

But Mr. Mondavi’s many supporters say the center will give a much needed lift to Napa, whose downtown remains frayed despite the valley’s growing prosperity.

And Peggy Loar, the center’s executive director, says that it will do much more than extol the virtues of the so-called good life. The center’s permanent exhibition, “Soil and Spirit: The Quest for Nourishment,” will explore culinary traditions and influences in America. The center will also house exhibitions on organic agriculture, food and hunger, and other timely issues. There will be educational programs in which kids from urban areas can explore the organic gardens, learn about farming, and make their own pizza.

Garen and Shari Staglin: Power Fund Raisers

Garen and Shari Staglin, owners of the Staglin Family Vineyard, have contributed a million dollars to the American Center’s campaign, but they do more than give: They are chairing the campaign to raise the $70-million it will take to build the center, of which $42-million has been collected.

The Staglins have also helped raise millions of dollars for the University of California at Los Angeles, their alma mater, often by staging gourmet dinner parties at their Tuscan-style villa.

“Wine is a catalyst for giving,” Ms. Staglin says.

And Mr. Staglin, an alumnus of the Stanford Graduate of School of Business, has led or participated in campaigns that have raised more than $120-million for that institution.

But the philanthropic project that they are most wedded to is their annual Music Festival for Mental Health, which last September raised $1.2-million in one day — without a wine auction, Mr. Staglin points out. The majority of the money goes to the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, with a small portion reserved for local mental-health charities.

The couple sponsored their first festival — which includes a performance by members of the San Francisco Ballet and San Francisco Symphony, dinner in the garden above their vineyard, and tastings of Napa’s most elite wines — five years ago, after one of their children was diagnosed with mental illness. Now the festival has expanded to include a symposium for scientists to share research information.

“The attraction of Napa Valley provides a forum for us to get people with wealth and influence to come and listen to the causes that we have,” says Mr. Staglin, “and if you get the right people in with the right atmosphere, being treated special, being fed special things, in an idyllic environment, and the cause is powerful enough, you can generate a lot of enthusiasm that sort of separates people from money they’ve been holding on to. You can get them really excited about the opportunities that these gifts can create.”

Nancy Andrus: a ‘Lust for Life’

Nancy Andrus, chairman of this year’s Napa Valley Wine Auction and owner of the Pine Ridge Winery, would certainly not quarrel with the idea that eating and drinking under the stars, surrounded by acres of vineyards, has enticed many wealthy people to part with their cash.

But Ms. Andrus wanted to find a different way to honor her friend Elaine Mackie, who died of breast cancer at age 39. Ms. Mackie, a nutritionist and marathon runner, did much to raise the profile of Napa Valley wines as the director of the Napa Valley Vintners’ Association. The $30,000 in donations that flowed in after her death were put into a trust fund.

The fund provides $2,000 scholarships — renewable each year — to high-school students who are not necessarily “A” students but who demonstrate Ms. Mackie’s “lust for life.”

Ms. Andrus wanted to be sure that the fund — and her friend’s legacy — would not fade away, so she and a handful of women planned a mountain-climbing expedition. They sent letters to people who over the years had asked them to donate wine for charity, and asked them to contribute a penny per foot climbed. In 1997, the women climbed partway up Mt. Everest, in hopes of raising $10,000 for the charity. Instead, they raised $80,000. Last year, the group tackled Mt. Kilimanjaro and raised nearly $90,000.

“I am not the most generous person in the world,” Ms. Andrus readily admits. “It has to be meaningful to me, and this is.”

Jamie Davies: Replenishing the Land

Like Ms. Andrus, Jamie Peterson Davies was looking for a way to honor the memory of a loved one. In her case, she wanted a memorial to her husband, Jack, who died two years ago.

Ever since the Davies purchased the historic hillside Schramsberg winery in the mid-1960’s and began producing champagne, Mr. Davies had been a tireless advocate for land conservation and preserving Napa’s agricultural character. It is thanks in large part to his efforts that to this day the law prevents land on the valley floor from being carved up into parcels smaller than 40 acres — 160 acres in the hills.

Earlier this spring, Mrs. Davies and her children established the Jack L. Davies Napa County Preservation Fund at the Community Foundation of the Napa Valley, to support the effort to maintain the region’s agricultural preserve.

Mrs. Davies says she chose the community foundation for several reasons.

“We liked the idea that it helps foster community participation,” she says. “And we would like to be a part of the growth of a foundation that supports what we believe in, and that is helping people in the county do what they do best.”

The winery, together with members of the nearby Culinary Institute of America, has also begun producing a sparkling wine called Querencia Brut Rose. Ten percent of the gross sales of the bubbly are donated to the preservation fund.

“The agricultural preservation law is repeatedly contested by developers,” Mrs. Davies says. “We have to keep educating people about how important it is to maintain this region. There aren’t many places in the world where you can grow world-class grapes.”

Miljenko Grgich: Old Roots, New Roots

Mike Grgich, as he is better known, believes that world-class grapes can be grown in Croatia, where he was born. And he knows something about that subject.

Mr. Grgich, who moved to California in the 1950’s, became famous on May 24, 1976, when a chardonnay he had produced as the winemaker for Chateau Montelena, a Napa Valley winery, earned the highest marks at a blind tasting in Paris, defeating some of the best French white wines. A Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon earned the most points among the red wines that same year. Those two victories marked a turning point for the American wine industry.

In 1990, after the end of Communist rule in Yugoslavia, Mr. Grgich returned to Croatia after more than 30 years and started a small winery, importing steel tanks for cold fermentation and oak barrels for aging.

“I thought maybe I could do something for Croatia, teaching young people how to make world-class wines, providing economic opportunity,” says Mr. Grgich, who now produces a red and a white wine at the winery.

He is also one of numerous vintners to become involved in Roots of Peace, which hopes to eventually deactivate 70 million mines in 70 developing countries and replace them with agricultural crops.

The charity, however, was started not by a winemaker but by Heidi Kuhn, a former producer for CNN, and an active volunteer in the San Francisco Bay area. In 1997, Ms. Kuhn was asked to sponsor a reception in her San Rafael home for a United Nations delegation promoting international demining efforts.

As she raised her glass in a toast, Ms. Kuhn says, the words just spilled forth: “That the world may go from mines to vines.”

“It was just like an epiphany,” she says. “It silenced the room.” Shortly afterward, using connections from her days at CNN, Ms. Kuhn began contacting people associated with the wine industry.

The charity has so far raised $500,000 — $250,000 in private funds and $250,000 in matching funds from the Slovenia Trust Fund.

It plans to hold a benefit in the fall, pairing wine not with food but with technology, in which wine and high-tech gadgets will be auctioned off together. “Pinot Noir and Palm Pilots, for example,” Ms. Kuhn says. “It’s the old roots of the wine industry with the new roots of technology.”