Donating proceeds toward fighting breast cancer is one way local wineries are making a difference.
Since its formation in 1999, Cleavage Creek Cellars has donated 10 percent of its profits to breast cancer research. This fact, however, may have escaped the notice of many customers distracted by the wine label. A sexy woman in a plunging top smiles up from every bottle of Cleavage Creek wine, and descriptions on the labels are equally provocative: “[Our] grapes are grown in the cleavage of some of the most beautiful California hills,” reads one.
But now, the winery’s focus is changing. Budge Brown, who also co-owns the Budge Brown Family Winery (which includes Tulip Hill Winery) in Nice, California, recently purchased the Cleavage Creek label from Sonoma residents Jeff and Barbara Conners. From now on, Cleavage Creek Cellars will focus on celebrating breast cancer survivors, raising money for research that focuses on a cure…and producing world-class wines. It’s the first-ever breast cancer awareness wine.
Starting this fall, eight Cleavage Creek wines will be offered at www.cleavagecreek.com or by calling (888) 295-1280. Pictures of real breast cancer survivors will grace the winery’s labels; their stories will be available on the Cleavage Creek website. Brown plans to donate 10 percent of all proceeds to breast cancer research.
“That’s 10 percent off the top,” he says, “not 10 percent of the profits. Who knows: There may never be any profits. But on the website, we’ll show how much money is collected, where it’s spent, who we give it to and why. It’ll all be out in the open.”
Cleavage Creek isn’t the only winery raising money to battle this deadly and devastating disease. In fact, it’s becoming common for North Bay wineries to offer special wines or events specifically designed to raise money for fighting breast cancer. In most cases, these events stem from personal loss—and the hope of making a difference to other women still living with this disease.
The new Cleavage Creek
In 2005, Brown’s wife of 48 years, Arlene, passed away from breast cancer. Devastated and angry, he decided to put his energies into helping other women with the disease. But he wasn’t sure how to go about doing that. Donating to charity didn’t seem to be enough. And then, in the middle of the night, it came to him: He’d establish a winery devoted to fighting breast cancer.
“It’s a win-win situation,” he says. “Somebody buys Cleavage Creek wine, and 10 percent of that is donated to research that will directly help people.”
During the first year, Brown plans to make 2,000 cases total of the eight Cleavage Creek varietals, which will range from $22 to $60 a bottle. Currently, the wine is only available on the website or through phone orders, but Brown is in the process of trying to get a retail location in Napa.
Part of the winery’s mission is to inspire women who currently have breast cancer or who’ve already conquered it. The wine club will have a category for cancer survivors called “sur-thrivers,” which will offer special pricing and events to encourage their continued strength. Each year, a new group of breast cancer survivors will be featured on the wine bottles.
“When a woman is diagnosed, she can look at the label and see a woman who made it, and here’s how she did it,” says Brown. “I want to inspire women going through it. I want to encourage them to live, convince them that they can be pretty and that they can get on with life. Our motto is ‘Live to Love Life.’”
The Cleavage Creek website will also have information to help women take charge of their treatment. It will offer information about research that’s been made public and will tell survivors’ stories.
Brown feels self-education is an important element in conquering breast cancer. It’s not enough for a woman to trust everything her doctor says. She has to do research on her own and keep up on all aspects of her health. “Sometimes it’s not what the doctors tell you, but what they don’t tell you that’s important,” he says.
“That was one of the failures of my wife’s program. They pump you full of poison and say, ‘OK you’re still alive. See you in five years.’ They don’t tell you that the disease can metastasize and attack somewhere else in the body. And then you don’t realize until it’s too late.”
Brown had long been a supporter of a charity for children’s heart research. He says he’s always liked that the charity gives all of its donations directly to the recipients instead of being swallowed up in a big charitable machine. He and his staff are actively researching possible recipients for Cleavage Creek donations; he wants to be certain the research being done is valid and progessing in the right direction to best fight breast cancer and help those with the disease. He’s also interested in supporting cutting-edge research and alternatives like holistic treatments and herbal methods. “Where the cure comes from isn’t as important as that a cure be found,” he says. “It’s time.”
Nothing more rewarding
In 1992 and 1994, winemaker Rick Hutchinson lost his two sisters, Janet Rhodes and Judy Rathaus, to breast cancer. Like Brown, Hutchinson, who owns Amphora Winery in Healdsburg, wanted something positive to come out of the loss.
“I was very angry for a long time,” he says. “My whole family was. We were trying to think what we could do to help, and we came up with the Stomp Out Breast Cancer event.”
This year marked Amphora’s third-annual Stomp Out Breast Cancer event. Every Saturday and Sunday in September, Amphora arranged private grape stomps for a $100 donation per person. On September 30, doors were open to the public and, for $50, women were welcomed into the vats (see sidebar, page 79). Juice from the stomps will be made into the $35 Due Sorelle wine (it means “two sisters” in Italian). Hutchinson plans to make about 120 cases of the wine, the proceeds of which will be donated to fighting breast cancer.
Stomp Out Breast Cancer has become increasingly popular since its inception. This year, the winery was expecting 245 participants, despite increasing the minimum donation from $25 to $50. In 2005 and 2006, the event raised $15,000 combined. This year alone, it was expected to raise $10,000. All proceeds go to the Breast Care Center at Sutter Medical Center in Santa Rosa.
“It’s going gangbusters,” says Hutchinson. “The event has been growing every year. We raised the price, but all the people we told didn’t even bat an eye. We try to be subtle about it, but there really shouldn’t be any subtlety. We’re trying to squeeze people for a good cause.”
Amphora Winery is unique in that almost all the profits from the event—some 86 percent—go toward fighting breast cancer. Most of the money provides free mammograms for women without health insurance. Hutchinson is from a family of 10 children, and he understands how women put off getting mammograms when money is tight. And state health care programs like Medicare and MediCal don’t cover breast cancer screening.
“My mom would have bought food or paid rent before she got screened,” says Hutchinson. “So I want the money to go to disadvantaged women. That way, once they get diagnosed, MediCal or Medicare can pick them up and they can go forward with their care.”
Stomp Out Breast Cancer wasn’t the only event that raised money for breast cancer research this year. Last July, Marin Brewing Company and Noonan’s Bar and Grill in Larkspur hosted the 7th Annual Microbreweries Battling Breast Cancer event. More than 1,500 attendees jammed together to try 28 California microbrews at Larkspur Landing.
This year, the event raised $35,000 for the Charlotte Maxwell Complimentary Clinic, a nonprofit organization in Berkeley that offers alternative methods and medicines for low-income women with breast cancer. It was the most successful year in the event’s history, raising $20,000 more than last year, according to Jenn Procopio, general manager of Marin Brewing Company.
Raising money for breast cancer charities feels great, but for Hutchinson, it’s only part of the reason for an event like Stomp Out Breast Cancer. “It’s more for my own good,” he says. “There’s nothing more rewarding than having a survivor come up and give you a big hug and thank you for helping out.”
Appealing to women
Other wineries in the North Bay are making smaller—but still significant—contributions to breast cancer research. This year, J Vineyards & Winery in Healdsburg offered “Pink Bundles” for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. The bundles included a silk-wrapped bottle of J Brut Rosé, which is pink (for breast cancer awareness, of course), chocolate truffles and a J T-shirt for $75; for $145 the goodies were packaged in an engraved aluminum champagne bucket. Ten percent of proceeds went to the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure, the largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists in the United States.
When the winery was looking for a worthy cause to support, marketing manager Julie Plunkett, who’d recently lost her mother to breast cancer, suggested the foundation. Overall, J Vineyards & Winery donated $2,000 to breast cancer research in 2007.
The response from customers has been very positive. “So many people are touched by breast cancer, you don’t even realize it,” says Plunkett. “We’ll be doing the bundles again next year, too. We’re still deciding whether to do it for October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month or in February for Valentine’s Day.”
The bundles give J Vineyards & Winery the added bonus of appealing to female customers with a woman-oriented product—which can mean added sales and good will for the winery.
For the past six months, Armida Winery in Healdsburg has also offered a special wine, called Glitter Pink Reserve Poizin, for fighting breast cancer. Although the wine is new, the winery has a long-term tradition of donating to breast cancer research, according to Bruce Cousins, who owns the winery with his brother Steve.
In the 1990s, Bruce’s ex-wife made a wine called La Femme Mystique as a tribute to women. Ten percent of the proceeds from that wine went to breast cancer research. This year, to appeal to women customers—and to contribute to a good cause—Cousins decided to renew the winery’s connection to fighting the disease.
While considering how to involve the winery, Cousins noticed that one particular woman’s T-shirt—with pink skull-and-crossbones and glitter—was selling well in the winery’s shop. He decided to put it together with Poizin, Armida’s “wine to die for,” that comes in a black bottle with a red skull-and-crossbones etched on it and packaged in a coffin-shaped box.
“I had the great idea that it would be fun if, instead of doing the Poizin logo on the bottle in the normal red, we did it in the pink with glitter sparkles instead,” he says.
For every bottle of Glitter Pink Poizin that sells, Armida donates $9 to cancer research. So far this year, the winery has donated $4,300 to the new mammogram van at Healdsburg Hospital and to breast cancer charity events including one the Flamingo Hotel in Santa Rosa.
4,000 deaths
Although it’s tempting to dismiss these breast cancer wine events as a fad or trend, for the most part, the wineries were moved to become involved because of personal tragedy. In fact, California has the highest cancer rates in the nation. This year, nearly 20,000 women will be diagnosed and another 4,000 women in the state will die from breast cancer, according to the California Department of Public Health. Marin County has one of the highest cancer rates in the United States—approximately 40 percent higher than the national average. Napa and Sonoma counties also have higher rates than the rest of the country.
For many people—especially those who’ve already lost women close to them—it’s time to put a stop to it.
“Frankly I’m angry about it,” says Brown. “It’s just unacceptable to me. Too many women are dying. But that’s why we need to celebrate women who’ve mastered this horrific ordeal. They’re heroes. A woman who’s faced breast cancer and survived is a real hero.”
So raise your glass—or buy a bottle—in their honor.
Click here to read Fancy Footwork by Alexandra Russell
