Sierra Madre Library Friends Present an Evening of Food, Art and Wine: Rain or Shine

The largest annual fundraising event for the Friends of the Sierra Madre Library will be held this Friday, Feb. 18, at 's Villa del Sol d'Oro in Sierra Madre. This Friday’s will be the 41st consecutive run for the wildly popular event. In past years, attendance to the event has averaged at around 500 people from Sierra Madre and the surrounding communities.

It’s events such as this one that have allowed the the Friends to provide more than $58,000 to the for equipment upgrades and improvements in the past year alone.

Under Pat Alcorn's direction, the Friends of the Library have been working tirelessly to ensure enough tickets are sold and that would-be participants are alerted to the nearly always sold-out event. Through numerous appearances at City Council meetings, outreach to local media and inclusion of details in the Friends’ newsletter, Alcorn and her team have done everything under the sun to make the annual event a success.

And planning and preparation has been ongoing even up until the last few days before the event. With rain forecast for Friday evening, the Friends have been moving quickly to adapt to the possibility of less than ideal weather conditions.

"We've got you covered," Alcorn said in an e-mail Wednesday night. “More tents and more cover have been added to the venue so guests can go from one room/tent to another to enjoy the party without getting wet if we do have some rain.”  

Rain or shine, the Friends have plenty on tap for event patrons, including wine-tasting selected by none-other than Sierra Madre’s own Bill Sullivan of the, who was selected for the second year in a row to chair the event’s Wineries Committee. Having owned the Bottle Shop for more than 26 years, Sullivan’s wine expertise helped him navigate through the hundreds of California wineries and to select only the best ones to feature at the event.

"Because this is my second year, I can now take a look at some of the sales trends to meet the demand at this event," Sullivan said in a release announcing his involvement with this year’s wine selection. Sullivan said that most of the wineries featured at the event only run in the $15 a bottle range. "Many in the community don't realize this is great opportunity to buy wine," Sullivan said. “This is a convenient way to ‘visit’ over 20 different producers.”  

Perhaps best of all, much of the wine purchased for the event was done at a discount of up to 45 percent off retail prices, savings that Sullivan says “should easily pay for the cost of a ticket”

Alcorn, too, is thrilled with the work Sullivan has done in selecting the evening’s wines. “The wine selection this year is the best that we have had in the 41 years of the tasting,” Alcorn said.

Fran Garbaccio will chair the Restaurant Committee, which has put together a delicious lineup of sampling from local restaurant, including two new additions in the form of Enrique's Mexican Cuisine of Monrovia and the soon-to-be-completed Wisteria Restaurant & Bar, currently under construction in the space formerly occupied by Lozano's.

"The Cuisine and Wine Tasting is one of the events put on by the Friends of the Library that help sustain the Library's acquisition of books, tapes, computer equipment and adult and children's programs," Garbaccio said.  "Ask anyone, and you will learn that Sierra Madre Library is one of the finest in the area and a real asset to our City."

In addition to the help from Alcorn, Sullivan and Garbaccio, the early entry "Premier Event" will be overseen by Colleen McKernan, with Dave Hart chairing the Sponsors and Underwriters Committee.

In addition to the wine tasting and food, Friday night’s event will also feature work from well-known Sierra Madre artist who designed the poster for this year’s event. A Senegalese native and Sierra Madre resident, N'Doye donated the artokr for the event poster, the original copy of which will be sold during the event’s silent auction, which will also include a night at a bed and breakfast and a hot air balloon ride.

Additionally, has arranged for music from four different groups to add to the ambiance of the evening.

The 41st annual Friends of the Sierra Made Library Wine and Cuisine Tasting will start at 7 p.m. on Friday and run until around 9:30 p.m.

Premier Event tickets, which allow 100 lucky attendees to enter the event one hour early, are already sold out, but general admission tickets are still available at a price of $60 per person.

Tickets can be purchased at, The Bottle Shop, and or at the door on Friday evening.