Online auction brings Naples Winter Wine Festival to entire community

You don't need to go to the Naples Winter Wine Festival to go to the Naples Winter Wine Festival.

Stay-at-home bidders to its growing online auction this year will find prizes that will include:

• Custom home design.
• Soirees with local restaurant owners.
• Personally tailored photographic and floral services.
• Behind-the-scenes tours.

And, of course, wines.

The online auction is in its fourth year, although its profile has been low. Adria Starkey, who is co-chair of the online auction committee with her husband, Jerry, would like to change that, especially, she said, because more prizes than ever speak to Naples interests:

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• Your own single-family home design by MHK Architecture & Planning, builder of Old Florida homes in Mangrove Bay, headed by Naples principal Matthew Kragh. The winner will receive a schematic design that includes a site plan, floor plans of each level and an architect’s illustration of the front of the house. It will total 100 hours of design time focused on the homeowner's vision.
• Dinner at Sea Salt restaurant with Cliff Williams of AC/DC — and you get to take home the bass guitar. Williams, backing vocalist and bassist for the hard-rock hitmakers ("Highway to Hell," "Back in Black") will share dinner with the winners; Williams' wife, Georganne; and Grace and Ken Evenstad of the top-rated Oregon winery Domaine Serene. The Evenstads will pair their wines to the courses. As part of the evening, the winning bidder will receive an autographed 1978 "Pre-Ernie Ball" Music Man Stingray bass guitar. 

• A four-person golf outing at Old Collier Golf Club, the secluded private course that wends its way along the Cocohatchee River in North Naples through 267 acres of an environmental wildlife sanctuary. "Exclusive is an understatement," the auction lot says.

"Local is what my husband and I thought was most important," Starkey said. "We felt there are so many people in Naples who want to help with the wine festival. But to go to the festival means you can go through a lot of money very quickly. It gets up to six figures before you can blink.

"That gets a little discouraging for people who can't spend that kind of money, and I totally understand it," she said.

Five years ago, when Starkey, Anne McNulty and Linda Malone were festival chairs, they saw the success of the e-auction component of Auction Napa Valley and decided to create one for Naples.

"There are many people in the community who want to give back because they see the good the organization provides to the community and all the children who are helped. So many people have come forward and said 'What can we do?' And that's really been the impetus of this auction." 

Likewise, the vintners who offer lots in the online auction have approached the festival to help.

"We've built over the years relationships with vintners, and we can't have them all participate every year in the festival. There's just not enough room for every vintner. But they like what we're doing and they've been involved with the festival in some capacity the past, so this year they may not be able to be in the festival but they're willing to offer something online," Starkey explained. 

Among those vintners are names such as DuMOL, a trending winery that specializes in both white and red blends, primarily sourced from the Green Valley subregion of California's Russian River Valley. Also among them is The Napa Valley Reserve, a St. Helena, California, private wine club founded by vineyard owner Bill Harlan of Harlan Estate, BOND, Promontory and Meadowood Resort — the wines in that lot are otherwise only available to members.

The 86 lots in the online auction this year have surpassed the 61 in the festival itself and include some imaginative offerings, such as six months' worth of flower arrangements from Fifty50 Creative Services tailored to the winner's color requests;  personally fitted shirts and shoes from Joseph Wendt Custom Clothiers; and spa days with dinners at a number of luxury hotels. 

Several of the lot items tie directly into help for children. There are also fund-a-need offerings and artwork from the Guadalupe Center. The winner of the "Tutu Beautiful" lot, offered by Naples photographer Heather Donlan, includes a handmade tutu for a young girl and a personality-centered photo session in the Everglades; Donlan will do a duplicate session for an underprivileged girl in Collier County selected by her "She Flys, We Rise" program.

The lots don't lack for long-distance luxury, either: Among them are lunch for 10 with Valerie Boyd and Jeff Gargiulo at their Oakville, Napa Valley, Gargiulo Vineyards, or lodgings for four in the Mondavi family home and tickets to the Barrel Auction Napa Valley at Charles Krug Winery June 1. An al fresco lunch for six with haute cuisine with groundbreaker chef Nancy Oakes and her husband, Bruce Aidells, is followed by a wine-tasting jaunt in their Healdsburg, California, neighborhood. 

One of Starkey's personal favorites is the "Outstanding in The Field" lot, a dinner for two at the winner's choice of location for this pop-up group of dining experiences that emphasize locally produced food and eye-stopping locations, from rural farmlands to sea caves or mountaintops around the U.S. and Europe. She has been to two.

"It's very much a farm-to-table dinner," Starkey said. "It's amazing food as well as fantastic wines, served usually in a farm-like setting where the food is grown. I've been to one here in Florida, and it was just beautiful, beautiful food as well as wine. They offer them all over the country, so if you're traveling you can attach that to your trip."

All auction proceeds go toward the mission of the Naples Children & Education Foundation, the Naples Winter Wine Festival's grant-making organization, to support charitable programs for underprivileged and at-risk children in Collier County.

To view all of the offerings, see nwwfonlineauction.com.

The auction will close at 11:59 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Jan. 31.