Napa Valley's best auction of the year for ordinary wine drinkers is going on right now – and there's still time to bid and still time to score a relative bargain.
The Napa Valley Barrel Auction ends Friday with a live auction, but you can bid ahead of time from anywhere online. And you should, because the earlier you bid, the more likely you are to get the wine cheaper, thanks to the auction format.
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Here's how it works. Wineries, 83 of them, put forward a half-barrel of wine for auction. Ten different bidders will each win a case of wine (12x750 ml bottles, though you might be able to ask the winery to bottle yours in a larger format). Each new bidder must outbid the previous highest bidder. But the next nine highest bidders stay on the board; they just slip down a notch. You stay on the board unless/until 10 people outbid you.
This means some savvy bidders who jumped in early will get a case of wine for $250. It's mostly too late for that. But, as of Wednesday afternoon, almost half of the lots (41) had a high bid under $1000. That means if you jump in at $1000, you might win a case of wine for that amount, plus 8 percent auction house fees. That's $90 a bottle, which is a good price for a lot of Napa Cabs these days.
The barrel auction was almost my favorite part of Auction Napa Valley weekend. If you go live – tickets are $500 and still available – you can taste all the wines and decide what to bid on. Most of the winery owners and many of the winemakers are there. It's Napa Valley so the finger food is terrific. It's a good time and it's wine-focused, so I'm glad that when Napa Valley Vintners decided to scrap Auction Napa Valley permanently, they kept the barrel auction.
That said, the bling of a Saturday auction is partially back. For $2000 a ticket – also still available – you can be one of 200 guests to sit at one extremely long table at Silver Oak Cellars. You'll get dinner from local superstar chef Cindy Pawlcyn of Mustards Grill, and have the chance to bid live on 10 scaled-down mostly wine-focused auction lots with a modest amount of bling. No backstage passes to the Oscars or helicopter skiing this time, but there are visits to Paris for a fashion show and South Africa for a safari, airfare not included. It's austerity era in Napa Valley: You might have to fly coach!
"It's going to be a more grounded, intimate event with fewer lots," said Teresa Wall, senior director of communications for Napa Valley Vintners. "This is purposeful and by design. The evening will focus on community – bringing the Collective Napa Valley community together to enjoy Napa Valley wine and food while raising funds for an important cause. The evening will begin with one long, community table for dinner. Then we'll move over to the lawn for the live, broadcast auction that starts at 8 pm."
In-person auction tickets aren't yet sold out, but maybe that's because all the smaller events are. There are 12 Vintner Hosted Welcome Dinners on Friday at $1500 a ticket, from wineries including Cakebread, Lail and Spottswoode, and they're all sold out. There are 11 Vineyard Walks and Wine Talks on Saturday morning at $500 a ticket, apparently including lunch, from wineries including Alpha Omega, Chimney Rock and Melka Estates, and they are also all sold out. Sorry!
It's all still much smaller than Auction Napa Valley, which cost as much as $20,000 per couple to attend and offered lots that garnered bids over $1 million. That auction was a powerhouse fundraiser for local charities, so it was important to Napa Valley Vintners to replace that funding. This weekend's auctions are part of that effort. Wall said last year's barrel auction raised $1.5 million, which is a lot of money and at the same time not as much as ANV used to bring in.
The main focus of this year's charity is local youth mental health initiatives, as the pandemic lockdown was especially hard on school-age kids; Wall said 31 percent of Napa youth report being bullied or harassed. Wall said last year's contributions have already allowed 800 students to receive individual or group therapy.
It's for a good cause, and to get back to basics, $1000 for a case of some of these Napa wines is not a bad deal. Right now that amount of money would put you in the top 10 for a case from Antinori Napa Valley, Bouchaine, Burgess, Cain, Duckhorn, Elizabeth Spencer (now with Heidi Peterson Barrett), Grgich Hills, Silverado, Truchard, ZD and others. The bids are live at Sotheby's website. Good luck.
