Skip to content

A town square for an unsquare town

redbankgreen

Standing for the vitality of Red Bank, its community, and the fun we have together.

WINE-CRAWL AUCTION ACTION

Chick_1

What a terrific idea for a fundraiser.

First, gather a couple of hundred well-heeled folks in blue jeans in the greenhouse at Sickles Market in Little Silver.

Hold a series of silent auctions for bottles of fine wine and gourmet foods as a warm-up.

Then, auction off “wine crawl” dinners, at which some of this region’s finest private wine cellars are thrown open, chefs from some of the best area restaurants provide signature dishes, and the winning bidders get limousined from one stop to the next in a head-spinning moveable feast.

Stand back. These folks will be waving their wallets and elbowing each other aside for a shot at the primo vino.

According to spokeswoman Karen Irvine, last year’s installment of the Sickles Market Wine & Cheese Tasting and Fundraiser “was a sort of quasi garage sale of the upper oenophile stratosphere” in which the crawls accounted for $9,000 of the $45,000 raised.

The money goes to Holiday Express, which puts on concerts and provides food and other services to AIDS patients, the mentally disabled, the isolated elderly and disadvantaged children during the Christmas season. Most people hereabouts know Holiday Express as the band that plays the tree-lighting ceremony in downtown Red Bank and features restaurateur/entrepreneur/athlete Tim McLoone.

Last year, the first stop of one crawl was Chick Cunningham’s home/business, Carriage House Marina in Sea Bright. His wine cooler, an above-ground space about the width of your average closet, doesn’t look like much. It’s off to the side of a large garage bay where Cunningham works on sailboats over the winter. But it’s stocked with Bourdeaux, a smattering of Italians, “a little Chablis for oysters, a little Chianti,” and various others bearing the dates 1988 and 1992, the years in which his two daughters were born.

The couple who won last year’s crawl were enthralled by Cunningham’s living and working quarters, a kind of oversized fairy-tale cottage tucked behind an apartment complex and overlooking the Shrewsbury River, he says.

“They were in here climbing all over the boats just having a blast,” says Cunningham. “It broke the ice for the night. So this year, I’m the appetizer again.”

As he did last year, Cunningham plans to pull a lot of corks for his guests this year. He buys much of his stock via a couple of online auctions for wine lovers, and “this summer, I hit the auctions pretty big,” he says.

And how does he know what to buy? Well, experience, for one thing, which has refined his olfactory sense. “I’m more of a nose guy than a palette guy,” he says.

Explain, please?

“The difference is that when you check the aroma of a wine, you know what’s coming,” he says. “You’re rarely surprised. But you can be surprised.”

This year, three crawls will be up for bid, and the winners may be in for some suprises, too. On the itinerary with Cunningham’s collection are Mark Murphy’s modest 500-bottle cellar in Fair Haven and Brian Pasch’s 6,000-bottle arsenal in Rumson. Another crawl is also clustered in the Rumson-Sea Bright area, and includes a stop at David Burke Fromagerie, which will provide both a meal course and wines from its famed wine cellar. The third will be held in the Colts Neck area.

Other restaurants donating courses will be Savanna, Lusty Lobster, Old Homestead, Salt Creek Grille, and Metropolitan Café.

The event is next Friday, Oct. 20, from 7 to 10p, and tickets are $75 each.

By the way, Sickles, which has been operating as farm since the late 1600s, was featured recently on MSNBC’s “Your Business” in a segment on niche marketing.

The episode will be replayed tomorrow at 5:30a, but unless you’re planning to plow the south 40, there’s no reason to ruin a good sleep-in just to see it; it’s available on the MSNBC website.

E-mail this story

Remember: Nothing makes a Red Bank friend happier than to hear "I saw you on Red Bank Green!"
redbankgreen Classics
Partyline
JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION
Performers at Red Bank’s Juneteenth community celebration Sunday at Johnny Jazz Park. (photo by Brian Donohue)      
BUTTERFLIES LOVE THE WEED
Save the monarch, plant butterfly weed. (photo and text by Partyline contributor Roseann DalPra)  
LANTERNFLY PARTY
An invasive ailanthus tree sprouting in front of the US Post Office on Broad Street is covered with invasive spotted lantern fly nymphs Wedn ...
STREETCORNER SERENADE
An Irish doodle named Cheddar listens to native New Jerseyan, singer/songwriter and former Houston resident Tom Foti, (identified in the hea ...
Red Bank 5K Fun!!!
Red Bank Classic – June 14th, 2025 (photo by Partyline contributor Adam Kaplan)  
RAINBOW OVER RED BANK
Saturday, before and after the storm that rolled through town. (photo by Partyline contributor Thomas Doremus)    
Mini Ballers Bring the Heat at Fusion Basketball School
As the temperatures heat up, so does the competition in the mini baller clinic at Fusion School of Basketball. These little tykes are intens ...
DOZENS OF PLEIN AIR ARTISTS “PAINT RED BANK”
Plein air artists take over town for first ever "Paint Red Bank" event. (click to read)
RED BANK: SIGN ON ICONIC DANNY’S STEAK HOUSE COMES DOWN
The sign hanging from the shuttered Danny's Steak House comes down ten months after a manager reported Danny's Steakhouse would be back "bet ...
FOR YANKEES FANS, GOOD TRASH PICKIN’
A collection of framed photographs of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and other New York Yankees greats was placed curbside along with a ...
RED BANK: NEW HANDICAPPED PARKING, WEST SIDE MEETING PLANNED
New handicapped parking sign West Side advocate had pressed for is installed, with meeting planned to discuss other concerns. (click to read ...
SUNSET AT SUMMER’S START
Crazy sunset clouds shot from Monmouth Boat Club on the Friday evening at the start of Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer. ...
SIDEWALK GOES FROM WORST TO FIRST
P (photo by Brian Donohue) What had been, in our estimation – and apparently in the eyes of the several people who have emailed and te ...
RED BANK: PEERING FROM ON HIGH, ACROSS THE DECADES
Roofers on the Azalea Red Bank top off the project in the shadow of a sculpture depicting another generation of construction workers who toi ...
BRICK FACELIFT CONTINUES ON MONMOUTH STREET
A million-dollar brick sidwalk makeover of Monmouth Street in Red Bank continues.
JAY AND SILENT EAGLE
A very loud blue jay squawks at an indiferent bald eagle in a treetop alongside the Swimming River in Red Bank this week. (Partyline photo b ...
PIZZA LOVING SQUIRREL SPOTTED IN RED BANK
Pizza squirrel spotted in Red Bank. (click to read)
GET YOUR MA SOMETHIN’ NICE AT THE RED BANK FARMERS MARKET
It’s a beautiful and sunny Mother’s Day for the first instance of the farmer’s market, held every Sunday, beginning in May ...
SIGN? WHAT SIGN?
Folks in Red Bank Wednesday exercising their riparian rights to access tidal waters first encoded into Roman law in 500 AD and later adopted ...
FANTASTIC MR. FOX
Partyline contributor captures photo of backyard fox.