Naples Winter Wine Festival Rallies in 2010, Netting $8 Million
February 2, 2010 |12:18 | Wine Information By : Team X
This year marked a return to form for the Naples Winter Wine Festival auction, the top-earning charity wine auction in the country since 2004. After diminished success last year that reflected the dire economic circumstances of early 2009, the Naples, Fla.-based auction experienced a turnaround, with totals from Saturday’s event cresting over $8 million, a 60 percent increase over last year’s $5.06 million figure.
While it is too soon to know if the rebound at Naples is a bellwether of recovery for charity wine auctions in 2010, this is now already a celebratory year for the auction beneficiary, the Naples Children and Education Foundation, and for the 100,000 at-risk children aided by its many health programs.
The success at Naples this year, though still well shy of the blockbuster $15.67 million haul in 2007, is subject to multiple interpretations. But Francis Rooney, festival chairman and former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, thinks that the resilience of compassion, even in lean times, accounts for much of it.

When I heard Nyetimber Classic Cuvee 2003 had come out top in a blind tasting at the world sparkling wine championships in Verona, beating super-brands such as Louis Roederer 2000 (who make the famous Cristal), my reaction was: so what? Blind tastings throw up weird results. When judges' scores are averaged out, the least offensive wine often comes out on top.
From Sainsbury's: SO Organic Chardonnay 2008 Vin de Pays d'Oc (£4.99; 13% abv) tastes as if it's been made by numbers using a duff calculator. A couple of horrendous sauvignon blancs – Sainsbury's Chilean Sauvignon Blanc 2009 (£3.22; 13% abv) and Sainsbury's Sauvignon Blanc 2008 Vin de Pays d'Oc (£4.39; 12.5% abv): yes, they're cheap, but that's no excuse for undrinkability.
Malbec from Argentina is arguably the best value in wine today. While other countries produce plenty of good-value wines, Argentina's malbecs offer unusual complexity at prices that don't break the bank.
A wine auction organized by Sotheby in Hong Kong on Saturday exceeded all expectations, reports Bloomberg. Rich wine lovers bid for ten hours on 800 lots and eventually spent HK$52.9 million (4.81 million euros), against Sotheby’s estimate of HK$40 million.








