Look at those paddles in the air for #FundtheFuture! Thank you everyone! #SonomaWineCountryWeekend #auction #Sonoma #SonomaCounty #TheProceedsMatter #Community #literacy #education #fundraising
The 2015 Sonoma Harvest Wine Auction, the crowning event of Sonoma Wine Country Weekend, raised a whopping $4.5 million for Sonoma County non-profits yesterday.
The event took place at Chateau St. Jean with a World’s Fair theme. Over 600 attendees bid high for a variety of custom crafted lots — including a dinner at Hamel Family Wines with James Beard Award winning chef Patrick O’Connell and music performed by Bruce Hornsby ($420,000) — and a fund-a-need style lot that specifically focused on children’s literacy, the focus of this year’s fundraising, which raised $1.9 million.
The largest grossing auction lot from Hamel Family Wines, “Virginia is for Lovers,” a multi-bid lot for a private dinner at the Hamel Family winery, featuring a menu by Chef Patrick O’Connell and a performance from three-time Grammy-winning musician Bruce Hornsby, raised a cool $420,000. It was followed by “The Ultimate Super Bowl 50 VIP Experience – Sonoma-style,” a combined lot from Benovia Winery, Kosta Browne Winery and the Super Bowl 50 Host Committee, which raised a total of $320,000, selling twice for $160,000 each.
The Buena Vista and DeLoach Vineyards “French Escape with Jean-Charles Boisset,” sold for a total of $300,000 to two bidders, bidding $150,000 each. Other top lots of the day included: “Dinner with the Icons,” which featured dinner with Richard Arrowood of Amapola Creek Vineyards & Winery and Robert M. Parker, Jr.; and Three Sticks Wines’ “Dinner at the Adobe in Sonoma and Fat Duck in London.” The highest grossing wine-only lot was “An Exhibition of Elegance with the Ladies of Magnum Force,” which has doubled in size since it was first offered, growing from 70 to 158 bottles and sold for $85,000.
But the auction isn’t the only fundraising component of Sonoma Wine Country Weekend – chefs and winemakers contributed countless hours to serve their food and beverages to guests from all over the world who flooded Sonoma County for the weekend. Ticket prices from events like Taste of Sonoma and Sonoma Starlight are expected to increase the $4.5 million to an even larger final number.
Proceeds from these events benefit non-profits throughout the county, including Sonoma Valley. Local non-profits that have received funding from Sonoma Wine Country Weekend include Sonoma Valley Mentoring Alliance, La Luz Center, WillMar Center, and more. sonomawinecountryweekend.com
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