Heady Bidders Pay $850,000 at Napa Valley Wine Auction

ST. HELENA, Calif. —  In an unexpected frenzy that in one case saw a single large bottle sell for $30,000, bidders on Saturday paid record prices for Napa Valley wines at an annual charity auction famed for specially produced offerings.

Total sales at the the ninth Napa Valley Wine Auction were $850,000, nearly double the record $450,000 collected last year.

A crowd of 1,300 people inside a huge white tent at the Meadowwood Country Club watched a scene comparable to recent free-spending art auctions, with bidders offering tens of thousands of dollars for bottles, many of them etched and hand-painted.

Three huge, 18-liter bottles of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet sauvignon stole the show. Bob Wooley, founder of the Embassy Suites hotel chain, paid $55,000 for them.

Wooley, the auction’s high bidder, said he did it simply because he likes the Winiarski family that produced the wine and then said he has no plans to drink the wine. He’ll donate the bottles and their contents to next year’s auction in order to support the three local charities which have received $1.6 million from the auction since it began in 1981.

Wooley spent $30,000 for a single large bottle of cabernet from the Robert Mondavi winery as a gift to race car driver Andy Granatelli.

Other wines that sold for high prices included 12 bottles of rare Grace family wines that sold for $42,000 and eight hand-etched bottles from various wineries that sold for $38,000.

The Napa Valley auction was begun to promote the wines of the Napa Valley. However, over the years its offerings have become dominated by specially bottled wines that are not produced for the general public.