The SWFL Wine & Food Fest has raised more than $27 million in support of pediatric care in the region, and the Jan. 20 live auction in Fort Myers added another $2 million to that total.
The SWFL Wine & Food Fest is the fundraising arm of SWFL Children’s Charities, Inc., which relies on a cache of sought-after pours, plates and prizes to drum up our region’s signature generosity for kids. Through grants and donations, the nonprofit supports programs at Golisano Children’s Hospital and scholarships at Florida SouthWestern State College and Florida Gulf Coast University. “We’re fortunate to have some really generous people in this community,” says the charity’s executive director, Heidi Davis. “They’re the heart.”
This year, the SWFL Wine & Food Fest funds support Golisano’s new outpatient surgery center located on the HealthPark campus—which will free up beds in the intensive care unit at the main facility and get patients care faster—as well as an expansion of the SWFL Children’s Charities Nursing Simulation Lab at FSW, which gives students opportunities to simulate medical care in controlled environments.
The weekend kicked off Friday with vintner dinners around Southwest Florida, which preceded the main event on Saturday: the grand tasting and live auction. Locally renowned chefs—like Nosh on Naples Bay’s Todd Johnson, Next Door’s Benjamin Voisin and pastry chef Norman Love—gathered to prepare pristine plates of wild mushroom risotto with truffle butter, braised duck gnocchi and blueberry poached grouper. This was Savour Catering chef Matt Geiger’s third consecutive year attending the festival. “I have to pick and choose which [events] that I can do,” he says, but this event helps him maximize his impact. This year, he used a sous vide technique to prepare a tender, autumn-spiced pork tenderloin, served over a goat cheese butternut squash puree with a roasted apple and autumn crumble. Vintners included famed cabernet sauvignon producer Lokoya and award-winning winery Jarvis Estate.
The live auction saw big bids, including a $70,000 winning bid for a trip to a private island in Belize for 10 people and two individual trips to Lerner Project’s Diamond Mountain estate in Napa for $70,000 each. The online auction raised more than $32,000—a pink Epiphone acoustic guitar autographed by Taylor Swift went for nearly $5,000. Thinking of the outpouring of generosity for youth in our area, SWFL Children’s Charities’ president Josh Dorcey is grateful. “It’s exhilarating when you spend time and effort to put a vision together,” he says. “We’ve partnered with the right people in our community to meet the need.”