After 5: Springfield couple wins tour of Spanish wine country

We certainly don’t expect to win.

That’s why when Lacey Cooper, of Springfield, received a call from the Center for Wine Origins, telling her she had won a trip to Spain, it was almost too much to believe. She barely remembers entering.

“I think I had to answer three questions about three places,” she recalls. “They were easy questions.”

Last year, Cooper, who works at Blue Cross/Blue Shield, entered the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Wine Origin’s annual online contest at www.wineoriginssweepstakes.com. The Celebrate the Grape sweepstakes is held each summer and fall, with winners taking their trips the following spring.

The Coopers’ jackpot: five days – March 31–April 4 – to explore Jerez, a small town in Andalusia, near the southern coast of Spain. Jerez is the birthplace of the fortified wine known as sherry, as well as the home of flamenco, the Spanish musical genre, and tapas, the country’s popular dining style.

The Coopers’ winnings – worth an estimated $2,000 – included airfare, accommodations, personalized tours of four Spanish wineries, known as bodegas, and the opportunity to attend some of the local cultural attractions.

Fun with culture

The couple enjoyed the flamenco show and their visit to the world’s largest clock museum, Palacio del Tiempo, where clocks dating as far back as the 16th century are on display, most in working condition.

They found the local cuisine a little too adventurous in one case. At one outdoor restaurant, Lacey and husband, Andy, were unable to find a server who spoke English, and they couldn’t read the menu.

Not sure what they ordered, they ended up receiving a plate of sea anemone, octopus and other items they couldn’t identify. They say that was an exception to the otherwise wonderful food in Spain.

The main course

The bodegas they visited were Gonzalez Byass, Williams & Humbert, Harveys and Sandeman.

At each stop, they were given a tour of the facility, then invited to taste a variety of sherries, usually accompanied by local tapas. They especially enjoyed El Majuelo, one of Harveys’ vineyards, and the tasting at Sandeman.

They described the bodegas as being the highlight of their trip. “Every bodega was different,” Lacey Cooper says. “I loved all of them.”

It was a learning experience for Andy Cooper, who works at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield.

After visiting the Consejo Regulador’s office – which governs a specific wine-growing area known as a denominación de origen, or DO – and viewing a PowerPoint presentation on the history and production of sherry, he realized this was much more than just a brand name or a style of winemaking.

“It was eye-opening, the fact that the location and history of that city is what goes into the production of sherry,” Cooper notes. “We didn’t know just how serious that was until we talked to the Regulador.”

For many years, there has been controversy over the use of certain place names such as Champagne – a region of France as well as the name of the world’s greatest sparkling wines – on the labels of wines made in the United States. In Europe, such labeling would be illegal, since the wine wasn’t made in that locale.

The Center for Wine Origin’s Celebrate the Grape contest is all part of an effort to heighten awareness of the importance of the location in wine production.

“When it comes to wine, there is no ingredient more important than location,” the center’s Web site declares. “The land, air, water and weather where grapes are grown are what make each wine unique. That’s why great names like port, champagne and sherry are more than just types of wine; they’re from specific regions in Portugal, France and Spain.”

For the Coopers, Celebrate the Grape was the opportunity of a lifetime.

When not working on his small organic farm near Republic, Brian Goodell writes The Wine Guy, a weekly column syndicated by Morris News Service.