June 15, 2000 | Read Time: 5 minutes
There was a time when Community Health Clinic OLE, a charity that provides medical services
to Napa County’s farmworkers and other low-income residents, operated a satellite office out of an old A&W Root Beer stand in remote Lake Berryessa.
Twice a week in the evenings, a doctor from the clinic, based 50 miles south in Napa, would minister to patients who lived in the rural area, using the kitchen as an examining room and the small anteroom where patrons once ordered burgers and root beer floats as the reception area.
Now, the Lake Berryessa clinic has its own building, and Clinic OLE’s main office in Napa is preparing to move into a new, 24,000-square-foot, $6-million health-care center, which it will share with three other charities that serve the region’s poor residents.
Much of the upgrade is thanks to the Napa Valley Vintners Association. Since 1984, Clinic OLE has received more than $3-million in proceeds from the annual Napa Valley Wine Auction, organized by the association, a trade group of 167 vintners. And it’s about to get another infusion.
This year’s event, which was held earlier this month and included an art auction, raised $9.5-million — nearly twice the amount raised last year.
The bulk of the money collected will be distributed in September to some two dozen charities that provide health care, help kids, and offer low-cost permanent and temporary housing to the county’s low-income residents.
That is not likely to happen any time soon. Between the booming economy and a near-obsession among the affluent with procuring rare vintages, wine auctions and other tasting events around the country are reaping millions of dollars for charity.
Although the Napa auction is believed to be the world’s biggest, other such events are also taking in large sums.
The annual Auction of Northwest Wines, which is sponsored by the Washington Wine Association and includes wines from Washington State, Oregon, and Idaho, brought in $1.2-million in August, to benefit Children’s Hospital of Seattle.
In the 13 years since the Washington Wine Association began staging the auction, more than $5.5-million has been raised for the hospital. All of it goes to a fund that pays for the care of sick children whose families are uninsured and cannot afford the expense.
Not all big auctions are sponsored by the wine industry.
Un Ete du Vin, in Nashville, the nation’s second-largest wine auction, was started in 1980 by a local businessman to raise money for the American Cancer Society. Last year, the event, which includes wines donated from around the world, took in $1.5-million. Over all, it has raised more than $7-million for the cancer charity.
The High Museum, in Atlanta, raised $700,000 in April at its eighth annual wine auction. Woodie Wisebram, the auction coordinator, says she receives at least one call a month from charities wanting to start a wine auction. The vintners, too, are inundated with requests for donations of wine for charity auctions.
“We probably get three to five requests a day,” says Nancy Andrus, owner of Pine Ridge Winery and chairman of this year’s Napa auction.
The Robert Mondavi winery, which this year expects to donate $30,000 worth of wine, was so overwhelmed with requests that in 1990 the company hired a staff member to handle them. In addition to providing the wine, the company also handles and pays for the shipping and delivery.
“It’s nothing to write a check and put it in the mail, but getting wine to different places is a challenge,” says Herb Schmidt, the company’s vice president for public affairs. “And of course a lot of the non-profits are staffed with volunteers. We take care of the logistics for them, because there are different distribution laws in different states, and we can’t expect the volunteer to understand that.”
Even in Napa, however, where wine auctions are so ubiquitous that they are staged by public schools and Boys & Girls Clubs, charities know that they have to earn the respect of the vintners to benefit from their largesse.
Over the years, as the list of beneficiaries of the Napa auction has grown, the process of receiving auction funds has become more official. Charities have to submit formal proposals, and members of the association tour the facilities of groups that apply.
“Nobody approaches them casually,” says Bob Hoffman, director of planned giving at St. Helena Hospital, which has received $2.8-million from the Napa auction over the past two decades. “You know that you will be scrutinized, and you know that you have to have a really compelling cause, or else they’ll tell you to try again next year.”
When the first Napa wine auction was held in 1981, not even the vintners knew what they were creating. Robert Mondavi, one of the founders, says the auction was patterned after one in France that raised money for a local hospital.
“We wanted to build something for the community,” Mr. Mondavi says, “but honestly, we did not have great faith in it.” The event raised $140,000.
Compare that with this year’s auction, in which a bidder paid $500,000 for a single six-liter bottle (equal to eight standard-sized bottles) of 1992 Cabernet Sauvignon from Screaming Eagle, a tiny winery whose wines command top prices.
The bidder, Chase Bailey, a co-founder of Cisco Systems, also paid $270,000 for a 10-year “vertical” (one bottle from each year from 1991 to 2000) of Araujo Estate Cabernet Sauvignon. And he paid an additional $500,000 for a “special events package” organized by the Vintners Association. The package includes dinner at the home of Francis Ford Coppola, the filmmaker, who owns the Niebaum-Coppola winery, and cooking lessons at the French Laundry, one of the nation’s highest-rated restaurants.
St. Helena Hospital’s Mr. Hoffman says local charities feel lucky to have the support of such donors — as well as the wine industry.
“We keep thinking it’s going to wear out,” he says, “but it goes on and on.”
