Napa Valley Wine Train Kicks Off Book Club

While I probably shouldn't wade into politics and race relations on a business site….I will.  The Napa Valley Wine Train kicked off a book club, made up primarily of African American women.  To me, it brought up a few questions…first, why? Second, Napa Valley has a history of being made and created by people admittedly that look a lot like myself, although there's a whole upper valley versus lower valley dynamic at play as well.

Hi guys. Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures. I'm going to spend a couple minutes today talking about something that's a rather uncomfortable topic in that if I had any business advisor they would tell me to steer clear of this and never talk about it again for the rest of my life but it's just not something I'm comfortable doing. Over the last few days it's come out in the news both here locally in Northern California and it's now hit the national news that there is a group club of African=American women that were kicked off the Napa Valley Wine Train. Let's start with what is the Napa Valley Wine train. It runs from downtown Napa up to Calistoga and it's about a 3-hour round trip. They serve lunch or dinner plus food, drinks, the whole kind of nine yards. It's a nice way to see the valley if you're a tourist. They're heavily marketed the thing to tourists and it is a pretty gorgeous ride.

A few things about the wine industry and about Napa in general. The first thing to understand is that the wine train starts in downtown Napa which has traditionally seen a very clear divide between the upper valley which is St. Helena, Yountville kind of, et cetera, and the lower valley which is kind of where American Canyon ends and where downtown Napa begins. Downtown Napa is home to the courthouse. They're home to a lot of the county facilities and quite honestly until a decade or two ago, they were home to what was a lot of abandoned storefronts and a rather rundown downtown for something that should be a tourist destination. Upper valley has never had that. St. Helena, they refer to themselves as America's Main Street and it's gorgeous.

That's one thing about Napa Valley that you have to understand. It's that there has been this traditionally lower valley versus upper valley dynamic that adds to the grower versus vintner kind of discussion that we've had so many times in the past here. Secondly you also have to realize that the wine industry itself, and we're talking owners of wineries here and people in places or positions of decision making authority, are not the most diverse set of people in the world. The valley was started mostly by Italian immigrants and there were some other folks that came in from Western Europe as well and as immigration has continued into Napa because of the wine industry and because of the kind of stature among the world wine capitals, et cetera, it's continued to draw people from outside of the county. You do meet a lot of Europeans and a lot of people that were born overseas.

However, most of them are from Western Europe or from kind of other Anglo-American countries. I've met plenty of people from New England … oh, New England… From New Zealand, from Australia. Definitely there's plenty of people from France and Italy still. It's not a diverse set of people though and that's something that the wine industry has struggled with is how do you kind of market yourself

to the entire country and continue to grow sales and then also encourage people from different ethnic or racial backgrounds, however you want to phrase it, to come into both the industry as a job and career-minded path and then open their own winery. Ceja vineyards and Campesino vineyards are two Hispanic owned wineries and those are ones that we tend to notice in my house. My wife was born in El Salvador so we do notice if there's a little bit of marketing done in Spanish or just folks that have a little bit of different outlook.

You do see some of those folks growing different grapes and there's kind of a different perspective which I think is good and that's really healthy. Do I believe that this group of women was kicked off of the wine train because of their ethnic background or however you want to phrase it? Frankly I don't think there's any way to know. I don't think that we've heard the entire story. Quite frankly if they were kicked off for just being loud and obnoxious on the wine train I would be frankly rather shocked. That's a pretty boisterous group a lot of times when you see people getting off. It's obviously a vacation kind of activity. There's plenty of alcohol flowing and so people tend to have a good time and enjoy themselves. When you get off the thing after three hours, it's usually people have had … It's obvious people have had a good time and it's good that they're walking to the final destination.

Unfortunately the Napa Valley Wine Train is in the news. I think it has also brought up some of the inherent, maybe not bias, but some of the inherent issues that have gone on in Napa over the years. I hope this can be the start of a conversation between folks both in Northern California and Napa and kind of wine county in general and how do we figure out how to be more inclusive and how do we get different viewpoints and how do we continue to grow the industry by being as inclusive as we possibly can. I think it's important and I think it's something that you're going to continue to see and hear about. It's something that we're going to write about a little bit more than we have to this point and hopefully that'll continue the discussion and hopefully this is the start and not the end of it.

Once again, mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures. I'm sorry for the small offshoot off of what is typical wine conversation into race, politics or relations in the United States. I know it's an uncomfortable thing and maybe it's something I shouldn't talk about but I think at this point it's important. I think it's important to know some of the history of Napa and of the region in general both in terms of the lower valley, upper valley stuff but then also because it's just frankly not the most diverse group of people in the history of the world and that's something that I hope changes. Once again, Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures. Have a good one. We've been called one of the best wine clubs in America by Forbes Magazine, I think partially because we're willing to have this dicussion with our members and our readers.