The wine spectator: Reflections on an $8 million weekend

Grace Evenstad, Rusty Staub and celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse at the Naples Winter Wine Festival. DEBORAH CULL/FLORIDA WEEKLY I learned this last Saturday at the Naples Winter Wine Festival “Expanding Horizons” Charity Auction: His Royal Highness Prince Robert Louis Francois Marie of Luxembourg does not live in Luxembourg! He lives in Geneva, Switzerland! Can you believe that? I got it straight from the prince.

This seemed odd (I’d always assumed that royals lived in their home countries), but Prince Robert didn’t make much of it, so I didn’t either, which I thought only prudent given my appalling ignorance regarding Luxembourgian internal affairs.

Prince Robert (who looked more like a moderately successful CPA than an American’s idea of royalty) proved to be a delightful conversationalist, and I also learned that he writes screenplays in addition to being one of the world’s foremost vintners, which is why he was attending the festival.

Retta Singer, No. 133, bids on a wine lot at the Naples Winter Wine Festival. The annual event raised $8 million for charity. DEBORAH CULL/ FLORIDA WEEKLY That’s one of the great things about the NWWF, which was held on the grounds of The Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort and celebrated its 10th anniversary over the weekend — you never know who you will bump into. Not 20 feet from where Prince Robert and I chatted, television’s Judge Judy was talking a mile a minute to a small group, and across from her, Emeril Lagasse, perhaps the most recognizable chef in the country, was swirling wine in his glass and telling a joke.

The festival has become one of the preeminent wine events in the world. It attracts international celebrities, chefs, vintners and connoisseurs, and it has raised more than $80 million to help poor children in Collier County. At Saturday’s auction, bidders forked over more than $8 million for rare bottles of wine and exotic trips, meals and outings. This year’s total exceeded last year’s figure by about $3 million.

His Royal Highness Prince Robert Louis Francois Marie of Luxembourg DEBORAH CULL/FLORIDA WEEKLY Outsiders often think only of Naples when Collier County is mentioned. But this is a county that also includes Immokalee and other pockets of deep financial despair. In short, the money raised by the festival is desperately needed and put to good use. No one seriously disputes that point.

The festival is the most glamorous social event in Southwest Florida. It’s what Mardi Gras might look like if the Junior League was in charge. Attendance is limited to 550 people. Couples pay $7,500 to attend, and a party of four can get in for $20,000 (included in the cost of admission is a private vintner dinner in one of several grand homes and penthouses scattered around Naples the evening before the auction, as well as a Celebration Brunch back at The Ritz to cap it all off on Sunday afternoon).

Through it all, wine flows, women flaunt and egos run riot. The food is as rich as its consumers, and moderation is not noticeably encouraged. At the auction, sleek, young wives wielding noisemakers sprint from table to table to congratulate winning bidders, occasionally trailed by huffing, cotton-topped hubbies who struggle to keep pace. And if anyone is embarrassed by any or all of the above, they do a splendid job of concealing it.

This glitzy, over-the-top side of the equation aggravates critics who believe that an equal amount of good could be done if the participants would simply write checks to charities that minister to the needs of Collier County’s disadvantaged children and be done with it. All of this Louis XVI-style reveling is unsavory in such hard economic times, detractors insist.

Let’s be honest, though. What fun would that be? And the NWWF is about fun.

If you weren’t there (and odds are you weren’t), this is a little of what you missed.

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The Friday evening vintner dinners, all hosted by NWWF trustees, are not large affairs, running anywhere from 20 to 50 guests. One such soiree took place at the stunning 18th-floor penthouse of Barbara and Ron Balser in The Montenero in Pelican Bay. Adria and Jerry Starkey co-hosted.

Mrs. Balser wore a sweeping creation that probably was the work of a famous designer. I would describe it further, but I actually know less about fashion than I do about Luxembourg, so let’s just say she looked great. Mr. Balser, a trim man of medium height, was turned out in a dandy slacks/ sport jacket outfit that was set off by a paisley ascot. Best I could tell, he was the only man in attendance without a tie. Not many guys can wear a paisley ascot and pull it off, but the dapper Mr. Balser is one of them.

The Balsers, who also maintain homes in Santa Fe and the Buckhead section of Atlanta, have a magnificent collection of artwork by Picasso, and the party’s theme played on that artist’s “blue period.” “Smoke” was pumped at a low level around the dining table to create the sensation of “walking on a cloud,” according to Rufino Hernandez, one of the party’s planners.

The Balsers’ visitors wandered about the penthouse, wine glasses in hand, oohing and ahhing at this work of art or that. But what I found most interesting was their collection of private photographs pinned to a corkboard in an inconspicuous location off a hallway (almost every home seems to have a collection like this, either on a bulletin board or plastered on a refrigerator). There were scores of photos displayed in haphazard fashion. Some clearly were of family and friends, anonymous faces known only to the Balsers. But mixed in with those were shots of Barbara and Ron with Francois Mitterrand or Barbara and Ron with the Pope or Ron with Colin Powell. There was nothing done to draw attention to these remarkable images. They were just there, mingled in with the rest.

Bill Telepan, one of New York’s rising chefs, was in the kitchen that evening, and he had the relaxed air of a man set to feed chili to a few friends at a neighborhood Super Bowl party. “I brought my sous chef and sommelier with me,” he explained.

Mr. Telepan said the star dish of the evening would be stew prepared with Nantucket scallops, shrimp from Maine and sea urchin from wherever sea urchin is abundant, I suppose.

“It is one of my favorite things,” Mr. Telepan said.

The next day, at the auction, I ran into Mrs. Balser, who was munching from a bag of popcorn. I inquired as to how she thought the dinner had gone.

“Interesting menu,” she said, arching one eyebrow ever so slightly as she popped a kernel of corn into her mouth, “sea urchin chowder, if you can believe that.”

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If there had been an award for the best hair at Saturday’s auction, it would have gone, hands-down, to Kyle Mac- Clachlan, the vintner and actor (“Twin Peaks,” “Sex in the City,” “Desperate Housewives”). Mr. MacClachlan’s longish hair — tastefully highlighted and magnificently sheared — had the remarkable ability to return to something resembling its original, informal configuration no matter how hard or from what direction the wind howled. There wasn’t a billionaire in sight whose mane was in the same league. Perhaps that is one of the reasons he is the screen star and they are not.

Mr. MacClachlan, who is 50 years old, got into the wine business a few years back through a friend who is a successful vintner.

“I’ve discovered that to be a vintner, you have to be a salesman and a bartender,” he told me. “You go to wine festivals and talk about your wine and try to interest people in it; that’s the salesmanship. And you’re always pouring glasses of your wine for people to sample; that’s the bartending angle.”

Mr. MacClachlan laughed and added: “Most actors start out doing things like being a salesperson or a bartender to support themselves while they struggle as an actor. I’ve done it in reverse. I use my acting to support myself while I get established as a vintner. Whatever works, I guess.”

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According to ABC news, Judith Sheindlin, known widely as television’s Judge Judy, makes a salary of $25 million from her syndicated program, which is something like the legal equivalent of professional wrestling.

For Saturday’s auction, Judge Sheindlin discarded her billowy black robe for an all-white outfit that featured snug jeans. Not long into the event, the judge got into a spirited bidding competition for a seven-day Bahamian cruise for three couples aboard a private yacht. She bid $320,000 for the vacation, but balked at besting the $340,000 bid from the eventual winner, Bill Bain, a festival trustee.

“This whole event shows what this town is really about,” ruled the judge, who has lived in Naples for a decade. “This is a big-hearted community full of giving people. It really is. But it’s a fun place, too. Yes, it’s true; the people here like to have fun. And they like to party as well. I like that, too, so I think it’s wonderful.”

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On the way home from Friday night’s affair at the Balsers, I stopped for a Diet Coke at a convenience store on U.S. 41, just south of Victoria Street in Fort Myers. A scruffy, middle-aged man wearing dirty Bermuda shorts and a soiled T-shirt approached me as I got out of my car. It was a measure of his desperation that he sought out someone who drove a tired 1994 Honda Civic.

He pointed to his stomach and spoke a single word: “Hungry.”

I fished two dollar bills from my wallet — all I had on me — and handed them to him. He nodded and walked away.

The incident left me unsettled. There was something jarring about the reality of the street and the unreality that is the Naples Winter Wine Festival. I thought about those who criticize the carnival-like atmosphere of the Saturday auction and the opulence of the private dinners.

In the end, it comes down this: We do what we can do. For the wealthy of Naples, that involves a big party, a lot of high living and huge donations to a worthy cause. For me, it is a couple of dollar bills delivered face-to-face to a hungry man in the parking lot of a convenience store.

Is one act nobler than the other, or even in better taste? Not for me to judge. But I will say this: They both are better than doing nothing. 