If you’re a wine lover, this is the kind of box you might want to be buried in.
It’s a wooden case that holds six 5-liter bottles of pinot noir, one from each of six different vineyards in the Kosta Browne family.
“The thing is massive,” winery founder Michael Browne said. “It’s like a coffin.”
That king-size variety pack is just one of the treats Browne is bringing to Atlanta for the four-day exercise in bacchanalia that culminates with the High Museum’s wine auction Saturday.
The auction itself is a nebuchadnezzar-size splash that has become, according to High officials, the country's biggest charity wine auction benefiting the arts, and it has spawned a raft of grape-soaked activities that give whole new meaning to the phrase "High officials." These include a "vintners" golf tournament, dinners at 14 local restaurants, winemaker dinners at the homes of sponsors (with food provided by celebrity chefs such as Kevin Rathbun and Linton Hopkins), tasting seminars, and a day of grazing and sipping before the gavel comes down at the big tent outside Atlantic Station.
"We do a lot of wine auctions around the country," said Browne, calling from California, "but this is my favorite. ... We started coming there five or six years ago, and I just loved the whole vibe."
Browne is not only bringing "an insane amount of wine," but he is going to auction himself (and his big wooden box full of wine). One of last year's high-ticket items was a dinner party for 20 at Rathbun's house with wines from the Kosta Brown cellars, food by Rathbun and a set of acoustic music from Ed Roland of Collective Soul. The evening went for $30,000, and "we sold it twice," said Woodie Wisebram, senior development manager at the High. "This year Kevin is bringing his brother Kent, too."
About 85 wineries will donate "thousands" of bottles of wine to the event, including rare large-format bottles -- those oversized vessels with the names of biblical kings.
Vintners explain this largess by saying they love supporting the arts, but at $400 a ticket, this is also a well-heeled audience, and just the sort of crowd that the wineries want to cultivate.
"These are 850 good people to be in front of," Wisebram said.
Joy Sterling, CEO of Iron Horse Vineyards, agrees. "The visibility is very high," she said. "The end wine lover, the person who’s buying wine, is in many ways the most important person. Creating that demand is absolutely key."
Iron Horse has been involved with the auction for most of the past 19 years, and returning to Atlanta is a homecoming of sorts for Sterling, who was news director for WTBS in 1979-80 before leaving for WABC in Los Angeles. After covering the 1984 Olympics, she left the news business to join the family winery. "I was in the enviable position of weighing heaven and hell, and heaven won out."
Events surrounding the auction include a trade tasting Thursday nightfor those in the industry; the Vintner's Cup Golf Tournament on Friday at the East Lake Golf Club; tasting seminars Friday, and the auction itself, beginning at 11 a.m. Saturday. For more information about the High Museum Atlanta Wine Auction, go to www.atlanta-wineauction.org/.
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