Napa Wine Auction Goes for the Bling Factor

May 11, 2015

(Wine-Searcher) - The wines have taken a back seat to the add-ons at Auction Napa Valley.

You can go to the Emmys or the Kentucky Derby. You can play golf in Montana or fish in Alaska. You can win a speedboat, a Morgan Roadster or a Mini Cooper convertible.

Or you can have a single bottle of 2012 Screaming Eagle – but make that a Balthazar (12 liters).

If it's a wine auction, and there's a chance of winning a private dinner for 30 with a concert by John Legend, it must be Auction Napa Valley, which announced its lots for the June 6 auction last week.

Auction Napa Valley has thousands of special bottles of wine on offer, but the industry's biggest fundraising event hasn't really been about the wine for years. Highly rated wineries like Kapcsandy can offer 24 magnums and dinner, and Scarecrow can offer a 10-vintage vertical, and those lots don't even make the live auction. Instead, they're among the 196 lots in the E-Auction.

For the 50 lots in the live auction, under a big tent at Meadowood, wine ratings and reputation don't sing like the bling.

Take lot 12, from Hill Family Estate, an obscure winery which has never earned more than 92 points from the Wine Advocate. The lot includes a private jet to a "one-day immersion course at the Naval Special Warfare Center SEALS training ground in San Diego" with "expedited training in weapons handling and an introduction to Close Quarters Combat techniques". Because that's not enough, you also get dugout tickets for four to a San Diego Padres game, passes to go on the field and personalized Padres jerseys so you can pretend you belong. (If security comes for you, maybe you can use Close Quarters Combat techniques). And because that's not enough, you get dinner with two minor Hollywood actors, and another dinner without any minor Hollywood actors. And a round of golf. Who needs wine?

To be fair, there are some wine-dominated lots in the live auction. Shafer Vineyards is offering a 10-magnum vertical of Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon; Bond is offering five jeroboams of the bidder's choice. But these are the exceptions.

Auction Napa Valley 2015 has a hard act to follow after last year's blingfest raised a record $18.7 million for charity, with lots such as trips to New Zealand, Bora Bora, the Oscars and the Super Bowl. Will this year be able to compete? Are the Emmys as good as the Oscars? Is Uruguay as exciting as Bora Bora?

The comparisons are appropriate because there's always pride involved for the wineries in how much money their lots can raise. This year's most interesting contrast might be between Lot 35, from Alpha Omega, and Lot 25, a joint effort by Nickel & Nickel, Opus One and Rombauer Vineyards.


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