Wine Train woes hit close to home

Loud groups are inevitable – but it's a question of hospitality, say Valley tour leaders|

Last weekend, when 11 women were kicked off the Napa Valley Wine Train for being “disruptive,” the incident took on a life of its own in social media, generating its own hashtag (#laughingwhileblack) and a slew of news reports in the local and national media.

Lisa Renee Johnson, the leader of the Antioch women’s book club, Sistahs on the Reading Edge, started posting on Facebook about the incident even as it was underway. “I felt like we were being transported back in time and these were tales my grandmother and great-grandmother should have been telling me about,” she was reported saying in the Press Democrat.

According to a Facebook post from the Wine Train that same afternoon, which cited “verbal and physical abuse towards other guests and staff,” the women were escorted through five train cars to exit at the St. Helena train station, where they were met by police. The officers determined the women were apparently not intoxicated, and had done no damage, so they left the scene.

The incident – and the following uproar – evoked an open apology from the Wine Train CEO, Tony Giacco. “The Napa Valley Wine Train was 100 percent wrong in its handling of this issue,” Giacco said. “We accept full responsibility for our failures and for the chain of events that led to this regrettable treatment of our guests.”

Their money was refunded, and Giacco even offered the mostly black book club a free train car for the club and its friends – 50 in all – on a future Wine Train journey.

Sonoma doesn’t have a wine train, but it does have the Sonoma Valley Wine Trolley and a lot of tasting rooms where groups of people come not just to sample wines, but to enjoy life, celebrate an occasion or maybe just have a little fun.

Several of those tasting rooms in the City of Sonoma are down an arcade known as Wine Alley. Bob Briner, one of the Two Amigos (with Squire Fridell, president of the Sonoma Valley Vintners and Growers Alliance), grimaced when asked about the incident in Napa.

“Let’s face it, it’s a festive atmosphere in a tasting room,” he said. “Folks in here can become very raucous.” He said his response is generally to offer those who may have had too much to drink a glass of water, and suggest they sit down for a spell – though he did admit they had “the local gendarmes on speed-dial.”

The Wine Train incident had two sides, however – one being possible over-indulgence, the other being racism. The book club posted a video of them arriving at the Wine Train station in Napa at 11:45 a.m., excited and happy but not visibly drunk. They are, however, visibly black – at least 10 of the 11 club members on the sortie.

They were escorted off the train in St. Helena, 45 minutes into its up-valley journey, and again posted videos showing they are evidently still not drunk, and still black.

Briner said that racism had never been an issue in his tasting room, saying he welcomed diversity in the tasting room and in the wine club. “I enjoy ethnic diversity. I can’t think of a single incident, not one, where there’s been a problem.”

For tasting room personnel it’s more often than not the behavioral issues of being “rowdy” or “boisterous” – code words for inebriated – rather than black. It’s against federal law to discriminate against a person or group because of their ethnicity, but it’s essentially part of the job to rein in the rowdy.

“We have clear instructions not to serve people who may be drunk,” said Briner. “You’re very much at risk when you’re in the alcohol business.”

The Sonoma Valley Wine Trolley operates daily trips to four wineries aboard a replica San Francisco cable car year-round. The cars hold about 30 people, and while they are sometimes chartered the passengers are usually made up of mixed groups.

“They’re all there for the adventure, for the love of agriculture, for the experience of four distinct wineries,” said general manager Phil Boland. “We rarely have rowdy people; if they’re rowdy it means they’re having fun.”

The wine trolleys also operate in Napa Valley – in fact only about a third of their 12,000 annual customers ride in Sonoma, a ratio Boland ascribes to the fact that there are two itineraries in Napa, and only one in Sonoma. Still, in either county, he says they’ve never had to ask someone to leave the tour.

“They’re expected to act like ladies and gentlemen. Maybe that’s a passé term to use,” Boland said thoughfully. “You might find somebody who’s a little unruly, and you might have to say just tone it down a bit, but in five years we’ve never had to stop the trolley, kick someone off and say call a taxi.”

Gary Saperstein was general manager of the popular restaurant the Girl & the Fig for 12 years, and now runs the LGBT-friendly Out in the Vineyard tour company. “It’s about hospitality, that’s the bottom line,” he said. “Whether it’s on the wine train or in a restaurant, whatever the situation may be.”

He points out that one important point of managing a disruptive party is to deal with them without drawing attention.

“You want to deal with the situation as quietly and subtly as possible, and to have them parade through six cars to get off the train – now everybody can see what’s going on. That’s the last thing you want.”

Saperstein said that though he didn’t know the details, he did clarify that his own groups have had no problems on the Wine Train, and they’ve been doing Big Gay Wine Train charters for up to 200 people with them for five years. “We’ve never felt any homophobia, the staff has been amazing, friendly, outgoing, accommodating – in all the years that we’ve worked with them.”

Sam Singer, a spokesperson for the Napa Valley Wine Train, responded quickly to the Index-Tribune’s request for comment. He confirmed that the on-train staff had received at least two complaints from other passengers about the group’s “loudness and language,” though he made no attempt to evade the company’s mishandling of the situation, reiterating Giacco’s apology.

“There was another way to deal with this than the way it was dealt with,” Singer said. “The company handled the situation 100 percent wrong. Obviously these women were not treated in a respectful manner and were made to feel embarrassed by the situation. That was not good for them nor was it good for the Wine Train.”

When asked, Singer also mentioned that they do eject people from the train fairly frequently. “Approximately once a month there is an issue similar to this, where the actions of an individual, a couple or a group of people, impact the experiences of other train passengers.” He said the offending groups are asked to depart the train in St. Helena and offered a ride back to the Napa Valley train station, just as occurred with Sistahs on the Reading Edge.

Related posts on the I-T’s Facebook page confirmed other instances where people being removed from the Wine Train were also paraded through five or six cars before being escorted off in St. Helena – which suggests that perhaps the Napa Valley Wine Train may want to re-evaluate its method of handling disruptive passengers, if not their definition of what qualifies as such.

Interestingly, though the story was picked up by national publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC, it started out on Facebook where Johnson has, at present, over 2,000 followers. And Saperstein, Singer and Boland all referred to it as a “social media” story in our interviews.

If there is a moral to be drawn from the Napa Valley Wine Train incident last weekend, it’s probably this: Don’t mess with book clubs – especially those with a large social media following.

Email Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.

UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy:
  • This is a family newspaper, please use a kind and respectful tone.
  • No profanity, hate speech or personal attacks. No off-topic remarks.
  • No disinformation about current events.
  • We will remove any comments — or commenters — that do not follow this commenting policy.