From the Editor

The scene was Zöe’s several months before the first festival in 2001, and the trustees who gathered were seriously concerned about the under-response to their invitations. Out they went into the back alley, and out came their cell phones. A participant describes beseeching words going nationwide, batteries failing, phones being handed back and forth to keep the crusade going. Hardly suave, but clearly dedicated.

Now it’s just before the first festival, and there’s concern for the eminent vintners who have been flown in on private jets. Many personal favors were called in, and would there be significant bids for their lots—or embarrassing ones? What might we have to do, the trustees wondered, to protect those lots?

The plan is for the first lot to be champagne and the trustees are prepared—in the event of a problem—to buy it themselves, pour to glasses all around and hope to build the momentum from there.

Well now we know … We’ve drawn the Robert Parkers, the Ann Colgins, the Emeril Lagasses and the Wolfgang Pucks in response to the calls over the years from Naples. Far from embarrassing our celebrity guests, we’ve gotten progressively spectacular in raising money for needy children at those Saturday auctions: 2001: $2 million; 2002: $3.2; 2003: $4.2; 2004: $6.6; 2005: $11.2; 2006: $12.2; 2007: $15.6. And, thank goodness, a very nice bid from a guest on that very first champagne lot touched off a relieved celebration that, really, hasn’t stopped for these past seven years.

Who are some of the heroes in propelling our wine festival to such extraordinary heights? First, there were the couples who came up with the idea at the home of Valerie Boyd and Jeff Gargiulo one balmy evening after dinner. Within a year, there were 16 couples fused and ready to make this happen. Jeff was the first chairman, with Brian Cobb as vice chairman.

Clarke Swanson, renowned as a successful winemaker in Napa, went above and beyond the call of duty to recruit eminent vintners to this new event. Couples Suzanne and Bob Chute and Penny and Lee Anderson were the first to bid more than $1 million each over time to stimulate the giving to the Naples Children and Education Foundation.

It all wouldn’t have happened without a good mix of skills. There are those who believe that the women previously involved in dedicated fundraising welcomed the men to this project, who immediately treated it more as a business enterprise than a reaching out to the usual donors. By the second year, it is said, more than half the money was raised from those outside Collier County. In all, a total of $55.5 million has been amassed to benefit the kids in Collier County who need help the most. There’s never a dry eye in the house when groups of those children are introduced before each Saturday auction begins.

One of the founders once observed that putting together that first three-day extravaganza "was like throwing several dozen weddings at once." Well, the marriage of wine-loving, super-caring Neapolitans to the requirements of children at risk here has been one made in heaven. Let the good times keep rolling for Wine Festival VIII.