The response to the Wine For Haiti Appeal has been phenomenal, and we can honestly say that the whole world is watching. We have had messages from as far afield as Japan, France, the UK, and even from America: our mates at Palate Press are running their own Wine For Haiti auction there, and Gary Vaynerchuk (of WineLibraryTV fame) is so impressed with what we're doing that he said he will give us a shout-out and tell ask his cameraman Mott to "link it up" when he records his next show. And needless to say, we're getting lots of press in Australia and New Zealand too.

And our target is $100,000

The charities who will receive the money are trusted names who we know can deliver aid rapidly and effectively: the Red Cross, World Vision and Oxfam. Any other suggestions are welcome.

The most important thing right now is to get the wheels in motion and get the donations coming in.

If we can get a little generosity from everyone, that will make for a hell of a lot of wine, a hell of a lot of donations at the auction and please believe me that every dollar counts in Haiti right now.

We are working on the WINE FOR HAITI fund-raising project in conjunction with a US wine network called PALATE PRESS which is run by David Honig and a host of respected wine writers. So this is not an isolated fund-raising effort. It's hands across the sea and all of that malarkey, and we will be promoting our efforts in conjunction with theirs in the US too. It's Live Aid without the music... okay, not a great analogy, but you get the idea.

And we NEED publicity. LOTS of it.

SO WE HAVE ANOTHER FAVOUR TO ASK.

We will be contacting newspapers, radio and TV in an effort to get the word out. So if you know anyone in the media -- even if it's only the tea boy in your local newspaper office -- then it would be a great help if you could tell them about what we are doing. Just direct them to the contact us page here.

And if you  have a direct line to anyone in the wine media -- James Halliday, Nick Stock, Matt Skinner, Oz Clarke, Natalie MacLean -- then please just pick up the phone and tell them we would like to hear from them.

We've already got Jancis Robinson, Matthew Jukes, Tyson Stelzer, Jeremy Oliver, Huon Hooke and Gary Vaynerchuk on-board. But we need as many people spreading the word as possible.

One more thing.

Here is a link to the WINE FOR HAITI ads we're running on the site: if you have a website or a blog, please consider posting one of the ads for us as a link to the fund-raising appeal here on BoozeMonkey. Every little bit of publicity we get will help to make our fund-raising efforts snowball.

People are dying and we CAN do something about it.

But we can't do it without your help.

So please -- pretty please -- give up a few minutes of your time to help.

Cheers! The Auction crew.

PS. Please note that we have some scheduled maintenance commencing 16 Feb for between 24 - 48 hours. During this time, our website will have a maintenance page - so if you have any questions, please contact us directly through the contacts page.