Every other year, Santa Barbara winemakers kick off their Blundstones and ditch their puffy jackets to don fancy gowns and tuxedos for the Santa Barbara Wine Auction. This year's main event is at the Ritz-Carlton Bacara on November 9, when all are invited to drink well, dine fine, and raise money to support both Direct Relief and the Community Health Centers of the Central Coast (CHC), which provide medical services for the very farmworkers who power the wine industry.
The 13th biennial affair -- which has raised more than $5 million for humanitarian causes over a quarter-century -- begins with a sparkling wine reception at 5 p.m. and then rolls into a multi-course dinner prepared by Neal Fraser from Redbird in Los Angeles, Jason Paluska from The Lark in Santa Barbara, and Lincoln Carson from the Santa Ynez Valley, who was a founding partner of Coast Range in Solvang.
The main event is, as the name suggests, the auction itself, which will be emceed by Andrew Firestone and feature a custom painting by Funk Zone-based artist Pedro De La Cruz. (We'll be running a longer story on De La Cruz and his painting closer to the event.) There tends to be a wide range of food, drink, and travel packages being auctioned off, and there's a silent auction ongoing throughout the weekend and online as well. The auction lots will be announced soon here.
Modeled after successful wine country fundraisers around the country, the Wine Auction was first held in 2000, when the winemakers selected what was then an emerging, Goleta-based nonprofit called Direct Relief as the beneficiary. Direct Relief grew to become one of the most respected and impactful disaster relief agencies on the planet, and the Wine Auction's support continued.
A meaningful undercurrent to this year's event is that Direct Relief's longtime leader Thomas Tighe, who started his role in 2000 during the time of the first Wine Auction, announced that he's leaving Direct Relief in December. This, then, will be his last auction, and his last time to detail in moving ways how the nonprofit helps people around the world whenever crises strike. Cue the feels and the tears.
In 2020, the Santa Barbara Vintners Foundation, which hosts the event, started to also support the CHC. At this year's auction, that support will be during the "Stand Up and Be Counted" paddle-raising part of the auction, where many kick in various amounts of money to directly fund the nonprofit provider's critical medical services.
If you can't quite pony up for the $500 gala but still want to show your support, this year there's a Friday-night wine tasting for just $95. The 5:30-7:30 p.m. gathering in the ballroom includes light bites and a concert by the Tepusquet Tornadoes, a band of wine industry professionals including Presqu'ile Winery's founder Madison Murphy. Presqu'ile is the honorary winery of this year's Wine Auction, highlighting the Murphy Family Foundation's more than $1 million commitment to Santa Barbara County charities over the years.