A Benefit to Whose Benefit? : Wine industry: Napa Valley vintners question the need to continue their annual auction.

It works as a grand social event, a place to be seen; it works as a promotional tool for the Napa Valley, and it works as a fund-raiser for charity.

But after the 10th Napa Valley Wine Auction last Saturday at the Meadowood Country Club, some folks were wondering whether the bloom was off the rose and whether the Napa Valley, America’s most famous wine-growing region, should recast its No. 1 function.

It’s true that on this sweltering day wine sales raised nearly $700,000 and total revenues probably topped $1 million. But the effort is getting a little too much for some of the vintners, who say they are getting tired of donating time, wine and money to something that they feel the Napa Valley no longer needs: more hype.

“What do the wineries get out of this?” asked one winery owner, sweat dripping from brow, as he sipped on a bottle of sparkling water. “We started this thing (the auction) for public image, and now we’ve got enough tourists we don’t know what to do with ‘em.”

Dick Grace, a winery owner whose Cabernet Sauvignons typically are the top prize at these auctions, voiced similar concern.

“We pushed so hard for so long, and maybe we’ve lost sight of what it’s all about,” said Grace. “Maybe we should savor what we’ve achieved, settle back and perfect what we have here. Wine is a lifestyle and an art form, not just a social scene.”

Yet it is the social scene that brings the wealthy from around the world, their sleek traveling companions bearing Rolexes and wearing the latest fashions from Paris and Rome. Thousands pay $800 each to attend the auction and a series of events that begin mid-week. In the process they eat sufficient quantities of gourmet food to shock a dietitian.

And the wine they buy is more than a simple beverage to accompany food. Many of the 360 lots offered here were huge bottles holding up to to 12 liters. A lot of these bottles will never even be opened; they will rest in wine shops under spotlights accompanied by a sign that says “1990 Napa Valley Wine Auction.”

The size of some of these bottles is daunting.

“How many people do you need to drink a 12-liter bottle?” asked Andrew Lawlor, rhetorically. “How many occasions in a lifetime will you need that much wine--and how many people can afford to spend $10,000 or $12,000 on one bottle of wine?”

The question was a good one, especially since it came from a man who was one of this wine auction’s earliest big bidders, and a man considered one of the savviest wine collectors in the nation. This year Lawlor, of Dexter, Mich., wound up buying only a few lots of wine; he said prices for most lots were too high.

Case in point: the final lot of the day, 10 cases of 1989 Chateau Potelle Chardonnay that has yet to be blended and bottled (it’s still in barrel), went for $14,000 to Ed Hogan of San Mateo. The final price works out to $116 per bottle, roughly $100 a bottle more than the price the wine will be when Chateau Potelle releases it next year.

More silliness, but with a purpose, came an hour earlier when local restaurateur Alex Dierkhising and partners acquired 10 consecutive vintages of Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon for $38,000. The auction lot included an 18-liter bottle (the equivalent of two cases in one bottle!) of 1985 Caymus Special Selection Cabernet as well as 18 liters of each of the next nine vintages.

This means that Dierkhising and partners bought the rights to wines through the 1994 vintage, and thus “own” wine that hasn’t been grown yet. Caymus Special Selection Cabernets, of course, are among the finest wines in the world, and Dierkhising’s restaurants in Calistoga are known around the world for their superb stock of great wines.

And then there was the $28,000 Gerrett and Tatiana Copeland of Delaware bid for a six-magnum selection of Beaulieu Vineyard Cabernet. The Copelands, owners of Chateau Bouchaine in the Napa Valley, like supporting the auction. They also paid $12,000 for a case of Schramsberg sparkling wine and a trip to London in 1992 for the opening of the European Economic Community. They also purchased (for $10,000) 20 cases of Mumm Napa Valley sparkling wine and a dinner and luncheon at the winery.

Not all of the big bids went to locals. Gino Morga, a defense attorney in Toronto, paid $20,000 for a single bottle of the Grace Family Vineyard Cabernet from 1987, “the best wine we ever made,” said Grace.

Morga, who plans to consume the wine at his daughter’s wedding (she is now 9), said he intended to stop at $10,000, but got carried away.

At the ninth auction a year ago, participants paid $850,000 for wine, allowing the organizers to turn over $385,000 in contributions to three local health facilities. A reserve fund holds leftover monies, to be dispersed in the event of a shortfall some year, or to be used for health-related projects, said a spokesman.

This 10th auction marked the first time the total wine sale was lower than the year before, but officials said they were pleased.

The unique sizes of the bottles have not been the only attraction; in past years, the packagings for the wines have also been noteworthy. This year was no exception. Many bottles were etched and hand-painted, and some were housed in elaborate boxes designed by famous artists and crafted as one-of-a-kind display cases, intended to be used for promotional purposes at wine shops. One package was a granite “table” with three huge bottles as the legs.

“I think we’ve just about run the course on the furniture,” said one winery executive, noting that the fancy boxes have been overdone and don’t seem to be attracting the attention they once did.

Perhaps. But just when when people are beginning to suggest that the auction be staged only every other year, someone is bound to come up with another gimmick. Maybe next year someone will auction off a house in which to put all the furniture.