Overview

Wine Cave refers to Democratic Presidential Candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg's closed door fundraiser hosted in December 2019 at The Hall Rutherford in Napa Valley, California. Buttigieg was criticized for the fundraiser during the sixth debate of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary due to its exclusivity.

Background

On December 13th, 2019, The Associated Press^[1] obtained an invitation which revealed that on December 15th, Pete Buttigieg would hold a fundraiser hosted by billionaire donors Craig and Kathryn Hall at The Hall Rutherford Napa Valley wine caves which boasts "a chandelier with 1,500 Swarovski crystals, an onyx banquet table to reflect its luminescence and bottles of cabernet sauvignon that sell for as much as $900." On December 16th, Twitter user @teddyschleifer^[2] shared photos of the gathering (shown below). The tweet gained over 6,200 likes and 2,700 retweets in four days.

Developments

On December 19th, 2019, during the sixth debate of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Senator Elizabeth Warren started a conversation surrounding Buttigieg's fundraiser (shown below, left). Later during the debates other candidates weighed in. For example, Andrew Yang mentioned shaking "the money tree in the wine cave" (shown below, right).

On December 19th, during the debate cover, Twitter users commented on the subject as well as mocked the concept of a wine cave. Twitter user @Julian_Epp^[4] tweeted an image with the caption, "Me and the boys in the wine cave" which received over 1,200 likes in a day (shown below, left). Twitter user @RealTimBlack^[5] tweeted, "I hope Pete’s Campaign died tonight in his wine cave. #DemDebate" which garnered over 1,200 likes in a day (shown below, right).

The wine cave remained a topic of conversation that night and into the next day, with NYTimes^[3] covering the topic. On December 20th, @JordanUhl captioned a GIF of Buttigieg "when everyone is dunking on you for having a private fundraiser with billionaires in a wine cave" (shown below). The tweet gained over 1,600 likes that day.

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