Driving Away Ongoing Misconceptions About Napa Valley’s ‘Problem’ : Wine: Many people believe the Napa Valley must have a problem with drunk drivers because of all the wine-tasting rooms. But the truth is, winery staff head off problems before they occur.

You’d think that California Highway 29 running through the heart of the Napa Valley would be slaughter alley.

After all, in the 30-mile stretch of two-lane road between Napa in the south and Calistoga in the north, about three dozen winery tasting rooms on both sides of the road serve wine without charge.

Moreover, it is estimated that about 2 1/2 million people visit the Napa Valley, California’s most famous “wine country,” each year, and almost all of them travel up and down Highway 29, the main route through the valley.

So you’d think law enforcement agencies would be running paddy wagons back and forth to a full-house drunk tank.

“We really have no problem up here,” said Ron Mattioda, an officer with the Napa office of the California Highway Patrol. “In fact, it’s so little of a problem that we disbanded our DUI unit some years ago.”

Yet the world has been trying to find a DUI problem in the Napa Valley for a long time, and the quest continues.

About three years ago, the Napa chapter of Mothers Against Drunken Driving called the CHP office. “They were looking for our ‘problem’ with alcohol,” said Forrest Holnbach, public affairs officer for the CHP office in Napa. “They figured with all our (winery) tasting rooms, we just had to have a DUI problem.”

Holnbach said he told the MADD office that there was no problem, but “they wanted me to check the records, so I went through all DUI arrests over the prior three years, and when you do that you have to hand-pull every report and the intox (intoxication) report too to see what these folks were drinking.

“Well, in that three-year period (covering 25 DUI cases involving accidents) there was only one DUI accident you could tie in with a winery. In all the rest, the people had been drinking beer, Scotch, bourbon. . . .”

Holnbach said that even in the one DUI accident case related to a winery, “you can’t blame the winery. This one individual had gone to a winery tasting room and he liked one of the wines, so he bought two bottles of it. He leaves the winery, pulls over to the side of the road, consumes both bottles, and then he goes down the road and he crashes. He could have gone into any grocery store and done the same thing.”

Holnbach said he told MADD of his research. “They just kind of round-filed it,” he said. “That’s because the result didn’t meet their needs.”

It happened again recently, he said.

“Just a few months ago, I got a phone call from ’60 Minutes’ out of New York. A woman wanted to do a story on our ‘DUI problem,’ so I told her about the work I did for MADD. Then, after a few minutes, she said, ‘Well, I don’t think we’ll be coming out (to the Napa Valley).’

“And a similar thing happened a couple of years ago, too. Someone else from back East called us looking for information on our ‘hellacious problem,’ for a story. I don’t know who’s feeding this misinformation to these people. It’d sure be nice to know who’s at the bottom of this.”

Statistics tabulated by the St. Helena Police Dept. show that in 1987, 1988 and 1989, most arrests were made between the hours of 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. And a spokeswoman for the department said almost none of the cases were linked with winery tasting rooms, most of which close at about 4 p.m.

Mattioda, who has been with the CHP for a decade, said he has “picked up maybe a couple of tourists in that time (on DUI charges). And what tourists we did pick up were not from the wineries. We’ve never seen a real (DUI) increase from tourists. (Mostly it’s been) confined to locals. Generally it’s kids who get some beer.” But he said even then DUI cases are rare in the Napa Valley.

Holnbach added that in an area that attracts millions of tourists each year, “you’d expect a lot more DUI cases than we had in that three-year period I checked.

“There is a misconception about the Napa Valley. People think you can go into a tasting room and drink all day. Well, most of them (wineries) have a tour you have to take before you get any wine, and then you get a half ounce of just two or three wines. By the time you get to the next winery, your chances of having a problem are slim to none.”

Holnbach added, “All the tasting room people are very good about watching for problems. They’re really conscientious about it. And they’re updating their education programs all the time.”

The Sheriff’s Department doesn’t work traffic in Napa County, but John Volpi, administrative lieutenant for the Napa Sheriff’s office, said, “Our feeling is the same, there’s little problem here with drunk drivers related to the tourist industry. I used to work traffic for the CHP, and there was very little drunk driving pertaining to the tourist industry. Most of the arrests for DUI are locals.

“The only time we have drunk drivers that are tourists is in the Lake Berryessa area, which is a recreation area not related to the wine industry,” he said.

A key reason, said those interviewed, is that many wineries in California train their servers to spot potential problems before they occur.

“We’re not allowed to serve if anyone appears to be intoxicated,” said Mike Martini, wine maker at the Louis Martini Winery in the Napa Valley. “We have two trained instructors on our staff who teach all of our people what to look for.”

Martini said a number of wineries now ask if there is a designated driver in the group and serve grape juice to that person.

The Martini instructors, Linda Schaffer and Phyllis Ronayne, went through a program called Training for Intervention Procedures by Servers of Alcohol (TIPS), put on by Health Communications Inc. of Washington, D.C.

Health Communications was founded in 1984 by Dr. Morris Chafetz. His son, Marc Chafetz, an attorney and the president of Health Communications, said charges for a two-day TIPS workshop run $500 per person, but the charge drops to $225 per person for seminars that are sponsored. And most of the seminars done by Health Communcations are sponsored. Among the most active sponsors are Anheuser-Busch and Miller, said Chafetz.

“We require that each workshop have at least six participants, and no more than 12,” he said, and often when a beer company sponsors a workshop and there are a few seats open, winery personnel have attended for the lower price.

Others who have sponsored workshops include Heublein; Citicorp, through its Diners Club program, and a number of hotel chains (including Westin, Ramada Inn, Ritz-Carlton, Omni) and restaurant chains.

Another program similar to TIPS is operated by the National Restaurant Assn. Other programs that have trained serving personnel include Techniques of Alcohol Management (TAM), sponsored by Stroh Brewery and the Michigan Licensed Beverage Assn. and Serving Alcohol with Care, coordinated by the American Hotel-Motel Assn., based in Washington.

Also, the California Alcohol Beverage Control department stages seminars for servers on what to look for. The seminar explains the laws and responsibilities servers have.

Wine Institute, the California wine trade organization based in San Francisco, has sponsored no formal training programs for servers, but it has contracted with the Responsible Hospitality Institute, based in Springfield, Mass., to come up with a training program for winery personnel.

Health Communications is the largest program of its kind, said Chafetz. He said his firm does between eight and 20 workshops per week throughout the country, and he said that insurance companies offer discounts on liability insurance policies for those retail establishments that train their servers of alcoholic beverages. “And those savings on insurance policies are often significant amounts.”

The Robert Mondavi Winery has used two different training programs, “and we also have a code of hospitality standards that we have written that all our hospitality people understand,” said Harvey Posert, head of public relations for the Napa Valley winery.

Posert said wineries train their staffs to head off problems before they arise. “Also, part of doing it is showing that we’re cognizant of possible problems and that we’re doing something about it, that we’re responsible.”

To train its personnel, Mondavi has used TAM as well as a Berkeley-based alcohol service training company, Last Call.

Firestone Winery in Santa Barbara County does no formal training for its tasting room staff, but general manager Patrick Will and a tasting room manager train new personnel in the protocols of serving in a tasting room.

Jim O’Shea, one of three TIPS-certified trainers, said Sterling conducts seminars for everyone on its staff, including those who operate the Sterling tram that carries visitors from the valley floor up to the mountaintop winery.