Weekender Encore: The Harmony of Generosity
By Rosemarie Kempton
Welcome to Weekender Encore
Most every Friday at 10 a.m., after you've enjoyed the Napa Valley Features Weekender, dive into our Encore edition. Each week, we'll spotlight a single theme, from local food and arts to cultural philanthropy. This allows us to delve into topics traditionally found in newspaper features sections.
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NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — Dedicated people working behind the scenes have quietly supported the Festival Napa Valley performances that take place throughout Wine Country every summer. One such individual is Tatiana Copeland, a longstanding champion of the arts. To say that she is passionate about music and helping young musicians is an understatement.
In 2006 Copeland, who is co-owner and chairman of Bouchaine Vineyards in Napa, and her husband, Gerret, established the festival’s Bouchaine Young Artists Series concerts. This series gives young musicians the opportunity to hone their performance skills and receive a generous scholarship from the festival.
In a recent interview Copeland declined to say how much she and her husband donate to the festival, but on the Festival Napa Valley website the couple’s names were at the top of the 2023 list for gifts of $700,000 or more.
She explained that the Bouchaine Young Artists Series is a natural extension of her love for music and passion for philanthropy. It serves as a launching pad for gifted young musicians and offers the Napa community a chance to experience the “profound effects of live performances” with some of the festival’s only admission-free events.
Copeland and her husband have supported more than 50 budding musicians in the nearly two decades since the Bouchaine Young Artists Series was established, and they have seen many of those talented individuals go on to lead successful careers.
“Music has been a part of my life forever,” Copeland said. “I always have classical music playing in the background. I’m incapable of working in my office without music.”
Her commitment to creating a unique experience for emerging musicians reaches back to her Russian heritage and a family tree that includes the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff.
“He was my great uncle,” Copeland said. “I’m called Tatiana in honor of his daughter. I grew up hearing about him and loved classical music. He was very close to my mother. She saw him a lot.”
She explained that though Rachmaninoff came from a wealthy aristocratic Russian family, he was poor when he married into Copeland’s family because his father had gambled away their money. Though her family helped him they did not want him to marry their daughter due to his poverty and his poor financial prospects as a musician. He was also marrying his first cousin, which was frowned upon in Russia.
“Then the tables turned,” Copeland said. “During the Russian Revolution my family had to flee Russia. Everything was taken from them. We lost it all. Rachmanioff was doing well and was able to help our family. Each generation helps the next.”
Her family found refuge in Dresden, Germany, where she was born, then moved to Denmark for several years before immigrating to Argentina, where Copeland spent most of her childhood.
“Argentina was a fabulous place to grow up,” she said. “It is very family oriented. The lifestyle is simpler and less commercial.”
She said that it was the perfect place to grow up but that living in the United States as an adult offers far more opportunities. A true citizen of the world, Copeland speaks Russian, French, Spanish, German and English fluently.
At UCLA she made Phi Beta Kappa before graduating summa cum laude, ranking first in her class of 500. She went on to earn an MBA at UC Berkeley.
With a family legacy that includes a grandmother who was the first woman to drive a car through Moscow’s Red Square, Copeland didn’t hesitate to go into business at a time when women in business were rare. Her multicultural perspective and linguistic skills were useful in her work at the duPont Co.’s European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Upon returning to duPont in Delaware, she met her future husband, a member of the duPont family.
“We live on the East Coast, yet in my heart I’m a West Coast girl,” she said. “My husband’s dream was to own a winery in France, but they don’t allow you to own a majority share there if you aren’t French, so when he suggested a winery in Napa, I lit up.”
The beauty of the Carneros area fired her imagination enough to envision what Bouchaine could be rather than what she saw on her first visit there: “two very dilapidated buildings with bare earth and no vines.” The couple purchased the Bouchaine Vineyards in 1981.
“Bouchaine needed lots of work,” she said. “It is a labor of love, time and money. It is still owned by the two of us. I call it New Bouchaine.”
When she met with the architect who designed the tasting room, Copeland said she greeted him with open arms because her intention was for the tasting room to be just as welcoming. The gray and brown rectangular tasting rooms that were in vogue seemed cold to her. Instead, she wanted no walls that were straight, which is hard to accomplish and a challenge for the architect, but it worked.
“The property has truly blossomed into a beautiful country winery,” she said, adding how much she and her husband are looking forward to spending 10 days in Napa during the festival. Two of the festival’s concerts will be held at their winery.
Copeland recalled Robert Mondavi as being a great mentor for Bouchaine.
“It didn’t matter if you were a competitor,” she said. “Robert loved music. We all wondered if there was a future for the festival in Napa. Now it is one of the most famous.”
Copeland does not play a musical instrument. While being related to Rachmaninoff inspired her love of music, she said it was a double-edged sword. She was drawn to the piano, but her mother discouraged her so that she wouldn’t be compared to her famous great-uncle.
“Now it is my turn to help young musicians.” Copeland said. “I always ask them these questions: Are you willing to go with it? Is this your life choice? Are you willing to make the sacrifices involved?”
New Zealand-born violinist Geneva Lewis takes the stage with pianist Audrey Vardanega at a sold-out concert at Bouchaine Winery on July 14.
Pianist Daniela Liebman, named one of the “40 Most Creative Mexicans in the World” and “100 Most Creative and Powerful Women” by Forbes Mexico, brings her extraordinary talents to CIA at Copia for the Bouchaine Young Artist concert on July 17. This event is admission-free. Reservations are recommended.
Prodigy harpist Alisa Sadikova, who has won many national competitions and performed at concert halls that include Carnegie Hall and the Vienna State Opera, will be performing at a sold-out concert at Bouchaine Winery on July 20.
Copeland’s support of worthy causes is not limited to Napa Valley. President Joe Biden appointed her to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Board of Trustees in 2022, and she is involved with many other boards and nonprofits, including the Delaware Symphony Orchestra, the Delaware Art Museum and the Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Delaware.
And her support doesn’t end with the arts. After Hurricane Katrina she helped rescue 150 dogs abandoned in New Orleans, and she helped to rescue 250 dogs and cats from the after-effects of Hurricane Florence in North Carolina.
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Supporting youth mental health: how it started, how it’s going
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Rosemarie Kempton is a Napa Valley-based journalist.