Napa's Famed COPIA May Fail

Posted by Alan Boehmer Jul 22, 2008

Robert Mondavi was, whatever else might be said, a visionary. He was the first to show early California wineries the path to excellence. The first to establish partnerships with the greatest winemasters of Europe and Chile. And the first to erect an $82million monument to the art of food and wine. That was COPIA, the American Center for Food, Wine and the Arts, named after the Roman goddess of abundance and occupying 80,000 square feet on the banks of the Napa River right downtown in the city of Napa, California.

The vision was to establish a center of instruction and seminars where the world's premier authorities on all matters of food and wine would hold court. A restaurant—Julia's Kitchen—was established to honor the amazing contribution of Julia Child, an honorary COPIA trustee.

COPIA was intended to be America's showplace of food and wine and in many ways it succeeded. But COPIA is on the rocks. Mondavi's vision was unrealistically visionary. The admission price of $12 discouraged those who would come to dine or see the exhibits. And the sometimes pricey seminar fees were paid in addition. The insurer of the COPIA bonds is awash in subprime mortgage debt and facing a looming deadline to come up with cash to back its guarantees—a deadline already extended six times since last December.

Nobody wants COPIA to fail, but since 2001 it's lost up to $12 million a year and faces a $14 million deficit today. The problem was that the project was just too visionary. The expected annual attendance at its various events was targeted at around 500,000. The reality was that the average attendance over its seven year history has been below 150,000.

COPIA is well worth restructuring and saving, but the State of California is not currently in a position to prop it up.