When Copia opened in November 2001, it was called “The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts,” but as it has evolved, it’s become clear, that, just as wine and and Napa Valley are practically synonymous, Copia’s concentration should be on the grape.

When Copia hosted the re-enactment of the famed 1976 Paris Tasting last May, the organization’s president, Arthur Jacobus, told the assembled audience, “This is an illustration of Copia’s potential to serve the wine community, and to be the premier education center for wine consumers in the U.S. That’s what Copia is dedicated to, and that is what our mission and vision statements will embody moving forward.”

In October, Copia announced a major restructuring that included beefing up the wine programs. Today Copia offers a wide variety of wine programs, ranging from those that are just plain fun to ones that enhance professional education, all under the direction of Peter Marks, Master of Wine and senior director of wine and food. And some innovations have been added that will add even more enjoyment to a visitor’s experience.

New Wine Stations

One of those innovations is a series of Wine Stations, which will allow visitors to combine wine education with tasting and do it on their own.

Ten stations, each with four wines, have been installed, and six of them will feature an educational format, Marks said, adding that they will change periodically. The other four will be more commercially oriented.

The stations will operate on the principle of a debit card, which a visitor purchases and uses to pick out and pay for wines to taste. Pours range from a taste to a half-glass. The card is inserted into the machine and the amount of the pour is selected. Hold the glass under the spigot, press the appropriate button, and the wine pours into the glass.

Marks described the stations:

• Best of Napa Valley Appellation: Cabernet sauvignons from Howell Mountain, Mt. Veeder, Oakville and Stags Leap District.

• Best of Sonoma County Appellations: Pinot noir from Carneros, Green Valley, Russian River Valley and Sonoma Coast.

• Finding Fault With Your Wine: A control (normal) wine, a wine with volatile acidity, one that has TCA (corked wine) and one with Brettanomyces, the fabled “barnyard” characteristics.

• Guess the Grape Variety: Visitors will take the wine to Copia’s descriptor gardens and try to identify the wine by its aroma characteristics and taste profile. Whites are chardonnay, riesling, sauvignon blanc and viognier, and reds include cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir, syrah and zinfandel.

• Wonders of winemaking: A chardonnay made with malolactic fermentation and one without; and whole berry fermented pinot noir and one made with the traditional de-stemmed crushed process.

• Oak Gets in Your Wine: Four chardonnays, one fermented in stainless steel, one in stainless steel with oak chips, one fermented in American oak and one fermented in French oak.

• Copia’s Monthly Wine: Zinfandel will be featured in June, pinot noir in July, riesling and rosé in August, and Italian wines in September.

• Favorites from Copia’s Wine Team: A selection of the team’s top picks for the month.

• Chocolate-Friendly Wines: Wines paired with chocolates from Copia’s Cocoa Cafe.

• Winery of the Month: Wines from a winery from anywhere in America.

Much more to do, too

Every day visitors can take part in several different programs, including a daily wine class and Winetasting 101. They can taste different flights of wine, and the Wine of the Week. They can blend their own wine and they can learn to pair wine with food.

The Wine of the Week, a complimentary taste served to all visitors, usually follows a theme for the entire month — in May it was Sonoma wines, and in June it is zinfandels.

The goal, Marks said, is that “people will come, taste the wine and learn how they taste, then we can suggest wines that fit their profiles.” Eventually wines will be separated by styles in Cornucopia, Copia’s store.

The flight tastings offer variations, such as two wines from each of the wineries that won the 1976 Paris Tasting — Chateau Montelena and Stags Leap Wine Cellars.

Winetasting 101 is a 30-minute session that teaches the ABCs of wine tasting, including spit bucket technique, and a new program, Winetasting 102 goes into more detail on flavors, tannins, oak vs. no oak and malolactic fermentation. “Even if you know about wine, this enhances your knowledge,” Marks said.

Another popular program is wine blending, in which the characteristics of each of the five Bordeaux varietals are explained and then participants experiment with their own blends. When they have decided on their final blend, they fill a 750 ml bottle, cork it, put on a capsule and create their own label using a template.

“We’re looking at doing pinot noir blending using wine from Carneros, Russian River, Anderson Valley and the Central and South Coasts,” Marks said.

Another new program is Introduction to Wine and Food pairing, which shows patrons how to achieve the best flavors from a food by matching it with a wine that enhances it. “We have become apostles of Tim Hanni,” Marks said. Hanni, also a Master of Wine, teaches classes at Copia.

Marks said Copia is putting in a demonstration vineyard that will display varietals from Napa Valley, starting with pinot noir and chardonnay in Carneros and moving north to the areas where cabernet and merlot are grown, and on to the locations where zinfandel and syrah thrive.

Visitors like to see a vineyard, he said. “We take people outside and show them our vineyard and talk with them about the growth of the vine, trellising, irrigation and other vineyard matters. We plan to spend five minutes and end up spending 25.”

Taste of Copia lunches are held on Fridays, incorporating a cooking demonstration and a multi-course meal with wine, that combines culinary and wine education with enjoyment. Copia recently started a Winemakers Dinner, incorporating many of the same features as the lunches. Marks said they are quite different from other winemakers dinners — at Copia the winery brings its own chef or picks someone who has worked with that winery’s wines. Both the chef and the winemaker speak and answer questions while guests eat and drink.

A popular feature of Copia is the walk-around tasting. Four are held annually: Taste of Napa, Taste of Sonoma, Artisan Wines and Association of African American Vintners (held last Saturday). Other walk-arounds in the past have featured wines from Santa Cruz Mountains, Mexico, Australia and women winemakers.

WSET courses offered

Most of the programs are geared toward consumers and are directed at enjoyment of wine, but for five years Copia has offered classes in the Wine & Spirit Education Trust Foundation and Intermediate Certificate programs aimed at wine professionals.

WSET is a British-based organization, and the program is tailored for prospective Masters of Wine. “(WSET) had a program in New York and wanted to expand into the West, and in 2002 we started working with them,” Marks said.

The WSET has four levels; the second, third and fourth are offered at Copia. Classes are taught by Marks, Joel Butler — also a Master of Wine — and Burke Owens, who until recently was the associate director of wine at Copia.

The first level is the Foundation, but Marks said that if someone has basic knowledge of wine, they can start at the second level, the Intermediate Certificate, which, over a weekend at Copia, covers the major types of wines and spirits and includes tastings of more than 40 different wines and spirits from around the world.

The Advanced Certificate, level three, goes into considerably more detail over two weekends and features tastings of more than 90 wines.

Successful completion of the Advanced Certificate exam qualifies a candidate for the level four diploma program, which involves six units taken over two years. The first two units, covering the business side of wine and wine production, involve coursework assignments and an extensive exam; the next four require blind tasting of different wines and spirits and completion of essays.

If one wishes to go further, a diploma with honors is essentially a dissertation on a subject of the author’s choice, after approval from WSET.

Marks, known as Copia’s Wine Guy, heads the wine program, and is ably assisted by wine educator Lily Peterson; wine programs manager Julie Lannert; Claire Holloway, who helps with wine programs; and Michaela Sullivan, an intern who is working on her masters degree from the University of Bordeaux.

For information about the wine programs or WSET classes, go to www.copia.org.