Combining renowned chefs and winemakers with elegant environs, the vintner dinners are part party, part fundraiser, and all-important to the eight-year-old festival. And exclusive, too: Just 17 dinners will be held this year, each with an average of 30 guests.

Festival trustees Connie and Tom Galloway are preparing to host their seventh dinner this month. Connie laughs and likens hosting a vintner dinner to another ultra-important social event that’s usually laden with joy and nerves: "It’s kind of like getting ready for a prom date," she says.

But, oh, what a prom.

This is not your usual suppertime soirée. If your mind is already drifting back to a dimly lit high school gym, back to a night of wilted crepe paper and bland balloons, well, drift it right back on over here.

In addition to savoring fine food and world-class wines, the night is a chance for attendees to meet the celebrated chefs and winemakers who create their exceptional dinnertime fare. It’s not unusual to encounter the occasional celebrity or even royalty among the guests, too. And attendees shouldn’t be surprised to see a few fluttering fairies or carnival roustabouts working the crowd either—the festival has an overall theme, and hosts often pair their party to that theme.

Trustees Bob and Shirlene Elkins threw a circus-styled dinner the year the festival bore that theme. Then, to make it extra-spirited, Shirlene also decided to make it a pajama party and sent specially decorated silk sets to all of her guests in advance of the event. She quips that if a photo from her party isn’t picked for the front page of the local newspaper—that is, if the party’s not amazing enough to warrant that kind of coverage—she’s disappointed.

"I’m kidding about that," she continues, "but I do want to do a great, fun evening for my guests."
hen trustee simone Lutgert plans the party she and her husband, Scott, will host, she aims to make sure the night will be "even more special" than the year before, she says. Lutgert describes the challenge as not to make the party more extravagant, per se, but—as with the festival itself—to make it a completely different experience each year.

"Every year should be the dinner of a lifetime," she says.

Past dinners hosted by the Lutgerts have included "Le Jardin," an evening where the couple swapped their furniture for a specially created plywood hedge and turned their home into a full-fledged garden; and "Pure & Simple," a black-and-white affair that hardly sounds simple at all: The group dined outside, inside a tent, atop a table-turned-shadowbox, surrounded by X-ray photos of flowers.

Trustees Judith Liegeois and fiancé John Scot Mueller turned to Shakespeare for the inspiration of their 2007 vintner dinner, assembling a Midsummer Night’s Dream-themed party in the courtyard of their home. Creating the magical, mystical forest of the play meant bringing in additional foliage, a fog machine and, of course, some nymphs to charm the guests. The couple also covered their pool for the evening to make extra space for dancing and cocktails, something many of the trustees say they do when preparing for their parties.

Why all the work? Liegeois, like other trustees, describes how the chefs and vintners take time from their schedules to prepare for and attend the festival. And she notes the hefty donation the guests make to the Naples Children and Education Foundation to attend one of the dinners.

"I honor them because I think they’re the most generous people, and I want my party to tell them how much I appreciate them," she says. "We’re their first introduction to the wine festival."

Picture perfect? Not necessarily
The prettiest party isn’t always flawless, though. A social event of such size creates a variety of variables, all demanding to be masterfully managed.

Consider the weather. Especially after the past several hurricane seasons, few among us are likely to insist that Naples is always a tropical paradise.

The Elkinses probably wouldn’t: During one of their vintner dinners, their beachfront home was
still undergoing hurricane repairs, and scaffolding was a necessary part of their home’s décor. The Andersons probably wouldn’t either: They hosted their first dinners outside, and were cursed with chilly winter weather. The couple ended up distributing coats and wraps from their closets to their shivering guests, and now vow they won’t go alfresco again.

Other unexpected variables include last-minute changes. When chef Emeril Lagasse cooked for trustees Ken and Grace Evenstad’s dinner, he slipped in a surprise course, much to Grace’s delight—but also dismay.

She wondered, what dishes and flatware would she use? And perhaps most important to Grace, herself a vintner, what wine would she serve with it? Lagasse, a friend of Grace’s, must have seen the frisson of fear travel up her spine, because he tried to soothe her by saying, "It’s OK. Paper plates will be fine." (This probably had the opposite effect on Grace. Her most recent dinner used 408 pieces of flatware, an occasion for excellence, not Chinet.) The surprise course turned out to be a truffle risotto, so Grace pulled the plate that was supposed to be under the soup course and had enough knives and forks to spare.

"If it had been soup spoons, I would have been in trouble," she says.

While all of the chefs who attend the vintner dinners are highly accomplished, Lagasse is probably the most recognizable, which has caused some unusual moments for Grace. Last year, he brought four chefs with him to help in the kitchen of Grace’s home because he is so often called away from his cooking to do interviews and chat with visiting fans. One year, Grace says, the servers she hired to work the party were star-struck by Lagasse—so much so that their professional abilities suffered for it, and she had to instruct them to refocus their energies.

There always seem to be quirks that force hosts into going to plan B to make things work. Things such as electricity, as Liegeois knows quite well. Midway through the third course of the first vintner dinner she hosted, there was a big boom; a transformer had blown, sinking much of her neighborhood into darkness. And yet Liegeois’ guests continued to enjoy their evening, maybe more than they had when there was power, she says. Some even thought Liegeois had deliberately dimmed the lights.

If Liegeois deserves kudos for somehow effortlessly convincing her guests that plan B was better than plan A, trustee Denise Cobb deserves kudos for her preemptive switch to plan B. The year Thomas Keller, chef of famed Napa Valley restaurant The French Laundry, was slated to prepare dinner in Cobb’s kitchen, she was so nervous she decided to make some improvements, replacing her existing oven with a larger one and adding two warming drawers.

Cobb confesses the drawers haven’t seen much action since Keller’s departure; she’s not a serious cook herself, she says. But she has found they’re perfect for Chinese takeout—always a good weeknight dinnertime plan B.

Please pass the pleasant surprise
Of course, not all surprises are stressful. Some are spectacular.

Grace wasn’t necessarily aiming for spectacular when she hired a New Orleans jazz band to play at her vintner dinner. She only wanted some authentic entertainment to make her friend, Lagasse, feel more at home, especially after Hurricane Katrina had devastated his city. The band had been together since the 1970s—but not recently, as Grace learned.

"These band members hadn’t seen each other since the hurricane," Grace says. "So they had their reunion at our house."

After his culinary work was completed, Lagasse joined the band on the drums—and then continued his drumming on the countertops, pots and pans. Grace says it was one of the most memorable parts of the dinner, and certainly one of the most fun and entertaining for her guests.

Impromptu entertainment isn’t foreign to Elkins, either: One of the guests at her pajama party—a guest who also arrived crowned by a bright blue, beehive-style wig—asked Elkins if she could sing along with the musician at the piano. Elkins agreed, but didn’t think the woman, whom she met for the first time that evening, was serious. Elkins was astonished when, five minutes into dinner, the woman in the wig was singing beautifully.

"She was phenomenal," Elkins says. "She was a professional."

There may be no more pleasant surprise than romance, though. At one of Denise Cobb’s vintner dinners, two young guests were introduced and are now engaged, Cobb is pleased to report. And Mueller used a few stolen moments before a vintner dinner he hosted with then-girlfriend Liegeois to propose to her—rather nervously, as Liegeois remembers. From his pacing and sweating, Liegeois thought he was going to reveal some terrible news. But about what? Her dog? Her children? Gasp! The dinner?

Fortunately, no to all. Mueller popped the question, popped out a box and promptly disappeared, Liegeois says with a laugh.

"And I’m left there looking at this gorgeous ring, in tears," she says.

That night, Mueller introduced Liegeois as his fiancée. And surely, here was one dinner where there was plenty of excellent wine with which to cheer an announcement of the couple’s new engagement.