Many benefit auction teams have added Wine Walls to their auctions in recent
years. They have some real advantages for your event:

1. They provide a modestly-priced item that most of your guests can consider buying; this can raise your take from those guests who might otherwise only buy a ticket to the event, and watch others bid.
2. They can enhance the “fun factor” of you event, by providing additional variety to the contribution options for your guests, plus the element of chance - what will they get?
3. Buyers who really like wine can buy multiple bottles!

We’ve seen a lot of variations on this item in our customers’ events, so we have a lot to share on this topic. We’re going to start today with a description of an interesting variation from our friend and customer Andrea L.; next time we’ll talk about potential pitfalls and regulatory considerations. We’ll occasionally come back to the topic to highlight other fun twists on the concept, too.

Here’s the way Andrea set up a Wine Wall for her school’s auction:

“A local grocery store donated 75 bottles of wine that were valued at $15.00 or more for our wine pull. The bottles were placed in bags (so the guests couldn’t see what they were picking), and sold for $15.00 each so recipient were guaranteed to at least “get their money’s worth” in return. Some of the wine bags were more valuable and some included gift cards to Jamba Juice, Domino’s Pizza, etc. that were random gift cards that were not included in gift baskets. The wine pull was fun for participants, sold quickly and was pure profit for our school!”

Much of this is pretty standard, but the twist that I loved here was the inclusion of gift cards in random bags - if you wind up with 5 or 10 Starbucks cards, it can be a challenge to find enough relevant lots or packages to bundle them into, but this takes care of that and provides added incentive for your guests to play.