The Pink Ladies took home the trophy at Thursday’s “Sip & Spell” — otherwise known as the adult Spelling Bee of the Great Valley Bookfest.
Last year, the duo of Rebecca Ray and Jennifer Mills finished runner-up at the event held at Delicato Family Winery.
“We relied on our good education,” said Mills on the secret of their success.
They correctly spelled “drapant” along with “chrestomathy,” “filipendulous” and “pulchritude” while sipping on glasses of wine
Ditto that for the Silly Spellers team of Laurin Sephos, Diane Wentworth, and Cathie Kavanaugh — thanks to battling it out with the Bee Witches to a best-of-three row-sham-bow — took second place.
They correctly spelled words such as “hagiographer” and “felicitations,” to name a few.
The Bee Witches were made up of Diane Carnahan, Stephanie Gase and Crescentia Thomas of the Teachers College of San Joaquin. They were given words such as “caterwauling,” “phosphorescent” and “esquamulose.”
The husband and wife team of Jason and Tammy Thornton made up the Highway to Spell team.
They had the challenge of having to spell “glissando” and “slantindicular” in the later rounds.
The words were taken from Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, with San Joaquin County Office of Education’s Assistant Superintendent Jane Stienkamp serving as the spell mistress.
Annie Cunial, who is SJCOE’s coordinator of student events and activities — she’s also on the GV Bookfest Committee — was in charge of the third annual “Sip & Spell.”
Proceeds from this “friend raiser,” according to Cunial, went to the Sierra High Class of 2018 Sober Graduation.
Teams were provided with an assortment of lifelines on misspelled words.
They could buy their way back in — $20 for the first three rounds, $30 after that — buy 20 seconds on use of their cellphones, or ask to call a friend.
In addition, they had the option of picking a word from the basket and using that word in a song.
The Bee Witches, for example, performed Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” after pulling out the word “woman.”

To contact reporter Vince Rembulat, e-mail vrembulat@mantecabulletin.com.