A creek runs through it

ETOWAH CO., Ala. (WBRC) - Jahn Coppey grew up working in his grandfather’s vineyards. His wife Janie was from the Duck Springs community in rural Etowah county. They met in Huntsville where Jahn had come to work for NASA. Twenty years ago, their combined backgrounds brought them back to Janie’s home where they started Wills Creek Vineyards and Winery.

“I grew up here on the farm. It was a dairy farm, and this was the dairy barn. So, I helped my dad, and my uncle milk cows here,” Janie remembers.

Jahn explains, “I’m originally from Switzerland, and I still have vineyards in Switzerland, but we have to go and spray every week, or every two weeks to kill the Pierce disease, to avoid the Pierce Disease to kill the plants. Muscadines grow naturally. So, we only planted muscadine here.”

“We have grape-based wines that have different flavors. We have dry reds and dry whites. When we can get our hands on fresh, we do a lot of fresh fruit from local growers. It’s all about supporting each other,” says Janie.

Here at the foot of Lookout Mountain you’ll find Wills Creek, a place with a lot of history here, and now a part of that history is the wine which bears its name.

Janie explains the name, “Wills Creek runs through our property, and it was the swimming hole for all of us that grew up here in the summer and we would go jump off the Wills Creek Bridge and just swim all afternoon. The spring coming off that gives us a beautiful pond is Duck Springs, but Wills Creek just stuck in my mind. So, the heritage is important to me, and I grew up here, so we came back, and decided we didn’t want to do cows, but let’s do a vineyard and a winery.”

The Coppey’s Wills Creek Winery was only the fourth in our state, but now it is part of a growing family of vineyards and wineries says Jahn, “We’ve been working for the industry now because why not? We promote our own thing but also, we created the trail, the wine trail several years ago then the tourism picked up on it.”

According to Janie, “Over the years we have wanted to have festivals because Jahn and I have been to festivals all over and it’s just a great way to go taste different wines and learn about wine, and we could see what a boon it would be not only for the wine industry of Alabama, but for tourism. It’s huge for tourism.”

Jahn laughs as he explains the genesis of Wills Creek Vineyards, “We had our first festival last year and we had over 300 people that came from 15 different states to wine tasting in Alabama. Who comes to Alabama to drink wine? I don’t know!”

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