Overview The Naples Winter Wine Festival is a three-day charity wine weekend in Naples, Florida, built around one Saturday live auction under a tent at The Ritz-Carlton Naples, Tiburón, where 51 lots raised more than $30 million in 2026. The 2026 weekend brought in 21 vintners, 18 celebrity chefs and 17 sommeliers to pour and cook for the bidders. Every dollar raised at auction goes to nonprofits serving vulnerable children in Collier County. The Naples Children Foundation founded the festival in 2001 and had counted more than $366 million raised by 2026, funding close to 90 local nonprofits. On site The weekend runs as a sequence. On Thursday the invitation-only Grand Crew party honors the featured vintners, chefs and sommeliers. Friday morning is Meet the Kids Day, a tour of the programs the grants pay for with a vintners' luncheon after, and Friday night the Vintner Dinners, 17 of them, in the private homes of the foundation's trustees. On Saturday a team of Ritz-Carlton chefs works a tasting route of rare wines before the bidding starts in the tent; the Wine Down party follows with Grammy Award-winning musicians, and a Champagne brunch closes it on Sunday. The festival added an online auction for the wider community in 2015. Audience The auction room is the foundation's trustees, past high bidders and patrons. The festival's 2027 partner packet names Naples, Kansas City, Connecticut, Tampa and New York as the top home areas of its live-auction bidders, and the festival lists owners and executives of companies such as Bentley Motors, Goldman Sachs, Kohl's, Morgan Stanley, Northern Trust, Uline and Wells Fargo among past guests. The 2026 online auction drew 583 registered bidders from 16 states. Talent and Influencers The 2026 edition, themed Picture This, included vintner Jesse Katz and chef Dustin Valette among its featured talent. The top lot of the year was a private country night with Thomas Rhett, which sold for $1.375 million; a 2026 Aston Martin package and a stay at Villa Polli on Lake Como went for $1.1 million each. Track record In 2026 the live-auction lots averaged $464,550, the lowest going for $170,000, and a separate Fund a Need paddle raised more than $7 million. The online auction brought in $1,010,600 the same year and had raised $5,916,398 from 2015 through that year. USA Today's 10Best ranked the festival first among U.S. wine festivals. The foundation's 2027 partner packet counts 420,000 children served through its grantees. Brand presence Corporate partner levels take the names of large wine bottles - Imperial, Salmanazar, Balthazar and Nebuchadnezzar - and partners attend the weekend as guests, with seats at the Vintner Dinners. Their logos run on the invitation mailed each fall to more than 1,000 households, on video loops at the Grand Crew party and before the auction, on signage at every event and in the festival book and magazine; the top level adds a branded activation station and a large logo at the entrance to the auction tent. Past partners include Bentley Motors, BVLGARI, CHANEL, Chopard, Flexjet, Graff, McLaren Automotive and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.