A Legendary Vintner’s Crucial Contribution to Auction Napa Valley

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With temperatures soaring into the triple digits and barrels of wine to be auctioned off sitting in direct line of the late afternoon sun, 1981’s inaugural Auction Napa Valley—which would forever change the face of worldwide charity-focused wine events—got off to a hot start. “The vintners had contributed many wines to be poured and enjoyed during the auction, but the weather, which was 105 degrees, had the steering committee searching all over Napa Valley for bottled water to share with the bidders,” recalls vintner Robin Lail.

At the conclusion of dinner chairs were moved into a semicircle facing auctioneer Michael Broadbent, the legendary British wine critic and author. “The weather was so hot that the very elegant Broadbent had his bare feet in a bucket of ice water behind the tablecloth covering his table,” Lail says. Vintner Tor Kenward, who is credited with helping to turn Napa Valley into a culinary destination, says, “During the first auction I remember putting ice cubes in my wine glass, making fans out of anything that moved air, and sneaking down to the Meadowood pool to cool off.” Despite the bumpy start, the first major charitable wine auction to be held in the United States would go on to set the template for how these auctions would be run and what lots would be offered—and Lail was integral to these efforts.

Fast forward 44 years to a sun-dappled June evening at the family-style pre-auction dinner at Chandon California, the famed Champagne house’s outpost on the outskirts of Yountville. When Lail took a seat at our table before the festivities commenced, the ensuing conversation had us wanting to shuffle our arrangements so she could stay with us for the meal, but we worried it would cause too much of a fuss. “She can pretty much sit anywhere she wants,” replied Caren Orum, our table host and proprietor of Arborum Napa Valley. It struck us in that moment that although we have tasted the incredible wine from Lail Vineyards and have interviewed her for previous articles, we hadn’t fully grasped Lail’s legendary status and what she meant to Auction Napa Valley.

In 1979, Lail was working as Robert Mondavi’s personal assistant and was present at a lunch that included Mondavi, his wife Margrit, and San Francisco socialite and author Pat Montandon. “Robert was raising money for the St. Helena Hospital and was planning to ask Pat for a donation,” Lail says. But Montandon had an idea of her own: “She said she would like to do an auction at her home the following summer for the Napa Valley Vintners and raise money for local charities,” Lail says. Margrit immediately thought that it could be like the famed Hospices de Beaune in Burgundy, one of the oldest and most famous wine auctions in the world; her husband, meanwhile, realized that it would be a great promotion for Napa Valley wine while raising money for local charities.

“The whole idea for the auction was to support people in need in Napa Valley, primarily the hospitals and the farmworkers,” says Michael Mondavi, Robert’s son. “At the time, the Queen of the Valley and St. Helena hospitals were struggling for funding as were the farmworkers. We had already formed an organization to support the medical needs for farmworkers in Napa Valley to help ensure they had access to medical care, so the focus was always to be on the hospitals and the farmworkers.” While Robert approached Napa Valley Vintners, the trade association for the local wine industry, to kickstart and run the actual auction—which even in the planning stages had outgrown the home of Montandon and her husband Alfred Wilsey—Michael recalls that Lail did a lot of heavy lifting. As the chair of the inaugural planning committee, Lail spearheaded the auction’s administration and organization. With Lail’s deep roots in the Valley, she was well suited to the task. Her great-granduncle Gustave Niebaum founded Inglenook in 1879, and her father, John Daniel, Jr., served as the legendary estate’s winemaker as well. Lail would carry on the family tradition herself, eventually launching her eponymous label after founding wineries with both Bill Harlan and Christian Moueix. So with her Rolodex and credibility, she was able to recruit vintners to join the steering committee and donate lots. And it was a drawn-out process, taking two years to pull the first auction together.

For several years after the 1981 event, Auction Napa Valley only offered bottles and barrels to bidders, but then the next big innovation happened. Lots were enhanced with trips and insider access to winemakers, but it took some convincing. Wanting to include a lot featuring travel to Bordeaux, Napa, and Tuscany in 1991, Michael says, “The auction committee would not allow the trip as they were afraid to support anything other than a 100 percent focus on Napa Valley. Today, those international trips are some of the most lucrative revenue lots.”

Other wine auctions took notice. Jeff Gargiulo, of Gargiulo Vineyards in Oakville, cofounded the Naples Winter Wine Festival (NWWF) and he says the Florida event followed a very similar format to Auction Napa Valley. From NWWF’s outset winemaker dinners in private homes and a live auction with lots enhanced by one-of-a-kind experiences were seen as key to the event’s winning formula. “When the Naples group got together to do our event, we immediately thought that this was the way to go,” Gargiulo says. “We used as much of it as we could, and we’re not embarrassed by it.”

Without the example of Auction Napa Valley, which raised $6.5 million for charity during the 2025 edition, it is doubtful that events such as NWWF, the Golden Vines, the just-announced Sotheby’s auction offering bottles donated by and tours and tastings hosted by members of the Institute of Masters of Wine, or countless others around the globe would exist today. “Honestly, we were so close to it we didn’t we didn’t know it was changing history. That came later in reflection,” Kenward says. Lail points out that while the original purpose was to promote the wines of Napa Valley while supporting local charities and healthcare initiatives, “it was so successful that it generated hundreds of wine auctions in the United Sates as time went on.” And that is certainly a legacy that everyone involved can be proud of.

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