ROLL OUT THE BARRELS

Posted on 07/18/2016 | About Napa, California

Napa Valley, California’s first legal American Viticultural Area (AVA) declared in 1981, may be small in size but it’s mighty in the wine world. The Valley produces just 4 percent of California’s wine grape harvest and is an eighth the size of Bordeaux, but its wines are among the most cherished on the globe with reds regularly topping $100 a bottle. The area’s influence and money power is most abundantly clear during the annual Napa Valley Wine Auction, which draws thousands of participants and makes millions for charity.

The centrepiece of a four day long weekend of festivities is a fast paced live auction of wine-centric lots bid upon by celebrities, business tycoons and other deep pocketed folks. The best years have raised upwards of $10 million in a single night for Napa Valley non-profits. Since its inception, Auction Napa Valley has given more than $150 million to causes such as OLE Health Centre, Boys and Girls Clubs and Family Centres for the linguistically or economically challenged.
This year was the 36th annual, but the first time for me to attend. While I was never in a position to bid during the live auction (about $100,000 seemed to be the starting price for most lots and some went for close to a million), I had plenty of fun over several days. Some make this an annual ritual - I met one couple who were enjoying their 17th consecutive year of attendance. For people in my snack bracket it’s more like a bucket list once in a lifetime experience. A full four day package cost $4,000 per person this year and a VIP package $20,000 per couple.
The weekend kicked off on Thursday night with Vintner Welcome Parties. Mine was at Sinegal Estate, a new Napa winery in St. Helena which just opened in the fall 2015. Owner David Sinegal popped opened French Champagne for our group of about two dozen people while we toured his cellars munching on elegant hors d’oeuvres. Then we dined at one large cozy table beneath the stars in his gardens beside a pool.
It was a magical evening with generous pours of excellent Sinegal Estate sauvignon blanc and cabernet sauvignon wines to match with lobster salad and juicy ribeye. Everyone made new friends and learned perhaps too much about each other’s private lives.
On Friday the Napa Valley Barrel Auction took place at the venerable Robert Mondavi Winery, in the midst of its 50th year anniversary. Under the hot, 105 Fahrenheit sun, dozens of top local restaurants served up a cornucopia of edibles such as pulled pork, lobster and corn soup, BBQ ribs, kale salad, smoked salmon and artisanal chocolates. It was impossible to try all but every bite was so good I tried. Napa vintners poured their wines – more than 100 current releases.
Tents, stalls and in some cases solid roofs covered much of the area but it was still incredibly hot outside. In the cool barrel cellars, bidding heated up for the highly touted 2013, 2014 and 2015 vintages served directly from the barrels by winemakers and vintners. A case of each of these limited-offering wines eventually went to the top ten bidders for each winery. Excitement rose as the bids on a case went higher and higher and the amounts were posted live on screens about the room.
Anyone who wanted could taste the wines offered from the barrel and most of us did partly to cool down in the air-conditioned cellars but also because the wines were so amazing. It was a sip and spit situation for many, me included. I had to drive early in the evening to a vintner dinner at Pride Mountain, which was 2,100 feet above Napa Valley, reached by a long windy narrow road in the Mayacamas mountain range.
When I finally reached Pride Mountain Vineyards at the summit of Spring Mountain, I saw a parking lot of limo drivers and black cars, obviously the smart way to arrive. The location was beautiful: 85 acres of vines straddling Sonoma and Napa valley appellations. Steve Pride introduced us to his winery with bubbly and hors d’oeuvres on a terrace as the sun set with glorious colours over the vineyards.
Chef Peter Hall delivered a dinner to remember of wine poached prawn salad, rigatoni with buffalo bolognaise, B&N ranch lamb medallions, farmhouse cheeses and honey panna cotta. The Pride Mountain wines were equally impressive, especially the intense, velvety 2006 and 2010 syrah and big rich 2001 reserve cabernet sauvignon.
On Saturday, there were al fresco lunches – mine was with vintners Rick and Elaine Jones of Jones Family Vineyards and vintners Willinda and Peter McCrea of Stony Hill. The festivities climaxed with the Live Auction Celebration at Meadowood Napa Valley. We guests were greeted with fresh shucked oysters and wine before being requested to head into the grand white tent for a confetti-flying, paddle flashing extravaganza.
Outside South American chef Francis Mallman and his culinary team had played with fire to create our meal. They dug deep pits and lined them with red hot stones (curanto method of cooking) to roast vegetables, cooked squash under hot embers and ash “rescoldo” style, used two fires with a cooking level in-between called “infiernillo” to cook salt crusted wild salmon and the dome method to slow cook rib eye and chicken hung on strings over a ring of fire.
To describe the evening as hot is an understatement. And it got even hotter under the big tent as the bidding began. The lots were over-the-top awesome. Each winery comes up with their own package at their own expense to auction off and it seemed to me, they all try to outdo each other.
As an example Lokoya Spring Mountain offered to fly four people on a private jet to dine at four elite chef’s establishments: Chef Daniel Humm’s three-Michelin starred Eleven Madison Park in NYC, Chef Grant Achatz’s three-Michelin starred Alinea in Chicago, Chef Josiah Citrin’s two-Michelin starred Mélisse in Santa Monica and Napa Valley’s three star Michelin The French Laundry by Thomas Keller. Accommodation while in Napa was two nights at Lokoya’s Spring Mountain villa. Then the foursome would be taken to Lyon to dine at the three-star Michelin Paul Bocuse Restaurant. Oh and the winery threw in a 5-litre bottle of each of the four Lokoya mountain wines.
There were 36 such lots. Ah to be so flush. Perhaps it’s an irony that the auction enriches lives for the rich as well as the poor. Or perhaps it’s fitting.