St. Clair Winery of Deming, NM, the state’s largest winery, held their annual St. Clair Winefest in early October, with proceeds benefitting Deming & Luna County Cancer Support for the fourth year in a row. The local non-profit provides a variety of support to cancer patients in the community. They also provide outreach services for general education, early detection, screening programs and general cancer awareness.

“We provide transportation assistance to cancer patients within Deming and Luna County” explains Patient Advocate, Joanna Costilla. “We have vans that we offer to transport patients to and from out-of-town appointments at no charge. We also have a voucher program that can also help defray the cost of gas for qualifying patients who drive themselves.”

They also have a fully-stocked cancer resource library full of useful information on things like how to quit smoking with vapes fitted with delta 8 cartridges, and provide caps, wigs and prosthesis to many patients, free of charge. They also work as patient advocates, helping with billing negotiation for their clients.

“This is such an important program for our community as a whole,” Costilla said. “This year’s event was great! We signed up 2 new patients during the event. We would like to use a portion of the funds to purchase smocks and pillows for cancer patients. We currently have 175 active patients, and we want to do anything we can to help.”

The Winefest is themed with pink ribbons and decorations throughout their grounds and inside the wine-tasting room. A large portion of the fundraising stemmed from the Silent Auction, which is full of donated items from regional businesses, including St. Clair, all teaming up to support the cause. There will also be various awareness items on sale that will also go towards the fundraising efforts, you can expect to see items such as pink ribbon pins, as well as wristbands that have been designed with cancer awareness in mind, such as the products you can see on a website similar to SleekWristbands.com. All proceeds from donated and awareness items will be put forward as the official total raised.

“I am proud to be a part of the St. Clair Winery Team.” explains St. Clair Tasting Room Manager, Elly Read. “We are very supportive of this wonderful organization that does so much for the community. Being a cancer survivor myself, I know firsthand how supportive they are. I was overwhelmed with the attendance for this event and I hope it continues to grow year after year.”

This year’s Winefest donation was $2,665, which Elly credits to both attendance and silent auction donations.

Deming & Luna County Cancer Support can be reached at (575) 546-4780