This year's Wine Relief fundraising campaign has been wonderfully envigorating, not least because such a wide range of donors were involved.
There were modest two-digit contributions from those who feel a heartfelt involvement with Wine Relief's desire to show that wine people care about improving people's lives in the UK and Africa through the brilliantly run Comic Relief organisation. Then there was the fantastic fine-wine trader Farr Vintners, who have donated £174,300 to Wine Relief – a greater sum that any other donor, including the big supermarkets.
Next biggest donor was Marks & Spencer, which really got behind the 10% of sales price mechanic by designating their entire South African range over £5 a bottle as Wine Relief wines.
Tesco did not participate in the 10% scheme this year but very kindly donated £50,000 to Wine Relief. Waitrose managed to raise well over £30,000 and Majestic contributed £20,000.
Berry Bros, who held a wonderful Wine Relief dinner last time, managed to raise an impressive – and rather daunting – £16,000 by auctioning off dinner with Simon Berry, me and some very special wines.
Next biggest single donation, I'm delighted to say, came from our Paulée de Purple Pages dinner: £12,700. The picture shows owner of Farr Vintners Stephen Browett with our own Julia Harding MW and one of the jeroboams he treated us to at the Paulée.
But the best thing of all was that this year's Wine Relief involved so many people – absolutely in the spirit of Comic Relief.
I'm sure the tens of thousands of people whose lives we will eventually touch will be hugely grateful. Great, great thanks to all those who did anything at all.
The last sums are still coming in but for the moment, it looks as though Wine Relief 2011 has managed to raise at least £391,058.
