Buffalo Bills Present Hospice Harvest Festival

As the leaves change color and the weather gets a little cooler, it's time again for the annual Hospice Foundation of Western New York's Harvest Festival, sponsored by the Buffalo Bills. The event, to be held Friday, Oct. 12, includes wine tasting, a wine auction, and a four-course dinner at the Adam's Mark Hotel in downtown Buffalo, N.Y. This year's theme is Fire and Ice.

Some 800 guests will spend the first part of the evening sampling from more than 100 wines and bidding on 55 silent auction wine lots, including six bottles of 1999 Pierre-Jouët Fleur Flower Champagne, valued at $1,200, and a 250-milliliter bottle of 1998 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon valued at $1,825.

After the bids are in, guests will start their meal with a caprese salad with heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, followed by butternut squash soup with crème fraîche. For the main course, diners will have a choice of a duo of short ribs in Burgundy sauce; French chicken breast with cranberry chutney with fingerling potatoes, braised carrots, and parsnips; or stuffed peppers with lentils, carrots, onions, and pine nuts. The dessert course will include petit fours and slices of cake.

When dinner concludes, the live auction begins. Guests can bid on packages for a trip to Fairbanks, Alaska, a getaway to Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and a weekend vacation to New York City where they can sit in on a live taping of The Late Show with David Letterman.

Tickets for the event are $200 or $2,800 for a table for 10. Over the past 12 years the event has raised more than $2.9 million for the Hospice Foundation of Western New York, helping them "to provide hope, care, and dignity to patients with a life-threatening illness and their families," according to Rosemary Collins, the director of public relations and community marketing at Hospice Buffalo.