Napa Valley Wine Auction

Each year, the Napa Valley Vintners Association hosts their “Napa Valley Wine Auction,” a highly successful annual event that has raised $200 million since its founding in 1981. While public perception may denote Napa Valley as an affluent community, it’s also home to farmers and their support staff — many who have been hit hard by the recent fires and droughts in California. The Napa Valley Wine Auction’s proceeds go directly back into Napa Valley to support vulnerable community members, with a specific focus on community health and children’s education.

We teamed with SenovvA to provide a high-end, luxurious evening with several programmed events. Throughout the night, guests would transition from an auction to a dinner, and conclude the evening with a fully-staged concert. To accommodate these diverse settings with minimal set changes, we designed a lighting rig that could easily adapt to meet the needs of each phase of the event. During the auction, our lighting design provided sufficient lighting to not only see the presenter and auction on stage, but also offer subtle, unobtrusive lighting within the audience during bidding. Following the auction, we transitioned the lighting to create a romantic dinner atmosphere for the guests, and then again to make our final lighting reveal for a fully-staged, dynamic rock and roll concert. In addition to our artistic lighting, we also managed task lighting for the event. The fundraiser’s remote location posed challenges for both transportation as well as facility services. Because the show was located on the 8th tee of the Meadowood Golf Course, we needed to bring in and set up all equipment without damaging the turf. We also needed to import basic utilities for the site, including electricity and water. Together with Senovva, we successfully installed lighting for both the bathrooms as well as a full, high-end kitchen to create a fully-serviced facility, all without compromising the integrity of the existing golf course.

Lightswitch provided this distinguished fundraiser with a lighting design that suited the elevated clientele without losing the Napa Valley spirit. Our clients especially appreciated the lighting we designed for the auction portion of the evening, which created a comfortable environment for the guests to bid on big-ticket items. Most importantly,The Napa Valley Wine Auction was incredibly successful that year, raising $16 million for Napa Valley community members in need.