The cost hovers around fifty million, and for years the word was "Mondavi," not Copia. Copia came later, just about the same time everyone was used to calling the project the "Mondavi Center." Copia, if you are curious, is the Goddess of Abundance and the real name is the mouth-filling "Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts." However the fact remains that Robert Mondavi bought the twelve acres the center sits on in 1996, added twenty million dollars as seed money and the rest, as they say, is history. Or, more accurately, history in the making.

It will be years before the Napa Valley discovers what impact this 80,000 square foot enterprise will have on the City of Napa and on the Valley, but some things are certain. One is that, any way you look at it, Copia is certainly the most expensive project undertaken around here in a very long time - possibly the biggest private venture ever. In addition to the building itself, the three and a half acres of decorative and working gardens stretch the edifice into the outdoors to the front, just as the curve of the Napa River performs a bit of visual prestidigitation to the rear. It is as if the studied modern severity of the stone, glass, polished concrete and steel edifice and the span of serpentine roof is meant to find its equal, at times even a mirror, in nature.

Inside, the 13,000 square feet of gallery space, the classrooms, theaters, an 80-seat demonstration food forum, a dining room, café and more are built around the idea that wine, food and the arts are meant for each other. And not just any wine, food or art, but American wine, American food, American art. The name may have changed, but this ideal has not, not since Robert Mondavi and his wife, Margrit, first put their mind to it in 1988. Polshek Partnership Architects designed it, the genius of Peter Walker and Partners drew up the acres of gardens (and much more) and hundreds of workers, craftsmen, artisans, technicians and others have put tens of thousands of hours on the clock. But call it Copia, call it whatever you would like, to many people the name "Mondavi" will always be what they think of when they visit or drive past. What it will evolve into, and what part it will play on the cultural and economic landscape of Napa will be, perhaps always should be, another work in progress.