Wine fest lands Puck

The Naples Winter Wine Festival is well known for its charity auction lots, from trips around the world to exotic sports cars, that raise millions of dollars for children's charities in Collier County.

It's the most successful international charity wine auction in the world, bringing together vintners, chefs, wine enthusiasts and philanthropists to the Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort in Naples every year. But the three-day Bacchanalian fest held each January recently landed some star power, when it named Wolfgang Puck the event's chef de cuisine for 2017. The celebrity chef will join other top chefs in the preparation of sumptuous meals for 580 people.

The pressure will be on Puck because the exclusive event costs $10,000 per couple. For $25,000 a party of four can reserve seats for a vintner dinner.

Puck, the owner of legendary restaurants Spago and CUT, is one of the chefs that put America on the culinary world map with his popular television show on the Food Network. Puck is the only chef to have twice earned the Outstanding Chef of the Year Award from the James Beard Foundation.

Since the event's inception in 2001, the festival has raised more than $146 million for its founding organization, the Naples Children & Education Foundation. The foundation has made grants to more than 40 nonprofits that have helped 200,000 children.