Kids + Wine = Great Cause

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Get ready, I am going to share one of the best kept secrets on how to get your hands on some of Napa Valley’s finest and rarest wines.  So here is what you do: you enroll your child (provided you have school aged children) or you could borrow someone else’s, and enroll them in a Napa Valley school and then wait 6 months for their school fundraiser wine auction to roll around and then attend and bid on some incredible wine lots. Or you wait until June when you hop aboard your private Gulfstream V jet to attend the yearly Napa Valley wine auction, where you rub elbows with Jay Leno, Terry Hatcher, and Francis Ford Coppola and bid $100,000 for 2 bottles of wine. Or you regularly read vintuba.com and wait for ChrisO to give you the inside scoop on how to bid by proxy at upcoming school fundraising auctions.

Now I must tell you school wine auctions is where I have been able to find some incredible deals on wines that most of us would never have access to. Believe it or not back in 2006 I was able to get a bottle of the much-coveted Colgin Cabernet Sauvignon Tychson Hill for a high bid of $150. Now when I did some research on several auction sites I saw that this same bottle of wine sold for $300+.  Now besides finding some great deals there is of course the added benefit that you are helping kids get a better education, something our dear Govonator has been unable or unwilling to do.

So here you go, the Young School in St Helena is hosting their annual wine auction this Saturday at Quintessa Winery.  You can check out the wines that are available for bidding here.  The good news is you do not need to attend this event to bid!

Here are some of the incredible lots available:

• a collection of wines from 23 “red hot mamas,” women winemakers in Napa Valley (the wines include Corison, Corra, Drinkward-Peschon, Failla, Rasmussen, Oakville Ranch, Phifer Pavitt and more)
• a collection of  wines from the Howell Mountain appellation (Cakebread, CADE, Dunn, Ladera, Lamborn, Outpost, Retro,Turley)
• a collection of wines from the Spring Mountain District appellation (Barnett, Cain, Fife, Charbay, Fantesca, Frias, Guillliams, Hollywood & Vine, Juslyn, Keenan, Marston, Newton, Paloma, Peacock, Pride, Schweiger, Sherwin, Smith-Madrone, Spring Mountain Vineyard, Stony Hill, Togni, York Creek Vineyards)
• a private tour of Napa wineries conducted by Wine Bible author and CIA instructor Karen MacNeil
• a blending experience with winemakers Bob Levy & Martha McClellan of Levy & McClellan
• a collection of wine with Young School-student-designed labels
• a trip to Washington D.C. including lunch with Congressman Mike Thompson in the Members’ Dining Room, passes to the House gallery, tours of the Capitol and Supreme Court and accommodations at the Henley Park Hotel and a dinner at BLT Steak
• a Cabernet Franc adventure at Cindy’s Back Street Kitchen with the proprietors of Lang & Reed
• jetsetting experience with hotels and activities in SF, Napa and LA
• a day of visits to local artisanal food purveyors and dinner at Amy & Jerry Giaqunta’s home, prepared by Deborah Pollack of Local Eden with a dessert finale by Bouchon Bakery’s chef Matt McDonald, co-hosted by Anne-Marie Failla and Ehren Jordan
• a lavish tasting at Swanson Vineyards’ Salon and luncheon with winemaker Chris Phelps
• an abalone dinner in Storybook Mountain Winery’s redwood grove, with abalone freshly caught and prepared by Young School teacher Natalie Herdell’s husband Joe, complemented by Storybook’s wines
• a pheasant hunt with architect Peter Collins and vintner Stu Smith
• serigraph by Thomas Pradzynski donated by Caldwell Snyder Gallery
• portrait of Barack Obama in jellybeans
• a “burgers & bubbles” feast, an Indian feast with Indian dancing
• a yacht trip to a San Francisco Giants game with the co-founders of Alpha Omega, Robin Baggett and Eric Sklar

The catalogue and proxy bidding form are online at   http://www.foreveryoungbenefit.org/

Founded in 1991 by JoAnn Bell, The Young School is a private non-profit non-denominational Montessori-derived program for children ages 6 through 12 years old/first-sixth grades. The name of the school is taken from two sisters named ‘Young’ who were well-known Sonoma teachers several decades ago. The first Young School was founded in their home in downtown Sonoma. In 1997 the school moved from its Sonoma location to St. Helena in the Napa Valley.

The Young School operates as a ‘one-room schoolhouse’ in quarters rented from a church in a residential neighborhood of St. Helena. The Young School follows a ‘tutorial’ approach to education, where children are tasked on their abilities and interests; the School has a 12-1 student-teacher ratio and is respected for its rigorous academics complemented by frequent field trips, enrichment in foreign language classes and music programs as well as community outreach.

So what are you waiting for? This is like a hall pass on buying the wine you have always wanted as part of your collection.

If you can’t make it to the online auction I will see you on the runway when you land your private jet at the Napa Airport for the Napa Valley wine auction.

Cheers,

ChrisO

PS most school auctions allow you to purchase tickets to attend the auction.  Stay tuned for a calendar of upcoming Napa Valley school auctions.

Tags: chriso, Napa Valley, Quintessa, wine auction