We were ‘100 percent wrong' for booting black women, says Napa Valley Wine Train CEO

The chief executive officer of the Napa Valley Wine Train apologized Tuesday to a book club of 10 black women and one white woman who were booted off the luxury tourist train for what train officials had earlier described as “loud and disruptive” behavior.

“The Wine Train was 100 percent wrong in its handling of this issue,” CEO Anthony “Tony” Giaccio said. “We accept full responsibility for our failures and for the chain of events that led to this regrettable treatment of our guests.”

Giaccio also offered, in his statement, to put into place and take part in “additional cultural diversity sensitivity training” suggested by Lisa Johnson, the book club’s president and one of the women ejected from the train Saturday.

Johnson said the apology felt orchestrated because while they were speaking, Giacco spoke about the company “wanting to get the media focus off” it.

“It just felt like spin,” she said Tuesday. Still, she added, “if they implement those things I think it would be awesome. I hope that they do it. But who’s going to make them accountable for that? So I’m just hopeful.”

Giaccio spoke late Monday night to Johnson, an Antioch author who documented the Saturday incident on social media as it took place. That sparked an online outrage, fueled by Johnson’s fan following, and highlighted by a sardonic hashtag, #laughingwhileblack.

That put the Wine Train in an uncomfortable glare.

“It didn’t make it look good, not just for African-Americans but all around,” said Mac McDonald, a black Sonoma County vintner who often works in Napa. “It’s going to bring the wrong attention to the train and to the valley.”

As to what occurred, there is now striking agreement between the two accounts: The group of women - including an 83-year-old grandmother - was having a good time and laughing. The train staff began, from early in the journey, to ask them to be quiet. After two warnings - a train spokesman said three - the women were asked to leave the train at St. Helena, where police officers had been requested to meet them. No one has been said to have been intoxicated, no arrests were made, and the women were driven back to the Napa station.

But the women’s dismay was exacerbated when a train employee posted on the company’s Facebook page that they had been asked to leave because they had been verbally and physically abusive to other patrons and train staff. The post was quickly taken down and Giaccio - repeating earlier statements by a Wine Train spokesman - said the post was “inaccurate” and made in “haste to respond to criticism and news inquiries.”

Giaccio also said that the company should have known well in advance that the group was going to be “loud, fun-loving and boisterous - because you told us well in advance that you wanted a place where your club could enjoy each other’s company.”

Staff members erred, he said, by not seating them in an area of the train more conducive to a large group.

Johnson said her book club, Sistahs on the Reading Edge, has not yet discussed whether to pursue a legal action. She said they are unlikely to take up Giaccio on his offer to treat them and 39 friends to a free trip as personal guests in a reserved car “where you can enjoy yourselves as loudly as you desire.”

“I know people are human and people make mistakes, but at the end of the day I will never, ever be able to get rid of that experience, it’s forever ingrained in my DNA,” Johnson said.

“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.”

You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 521-5212 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jeremyhay.