Rights of Passage : Since beginning limited schedule runs last September, the Wine Train has brought tourists and controversy to the Napa Valley

As the waitress poured the Champagne into the glass, she proudly noted that it was from Paul Masson. To many residents of the Napa Valley, serving a non-local sparkling wine, as much as anything, seems to sum up what the Napa Valley Wine Train is all about.

The excursion train that runs through the famed wine country is a handsome throwback to an earlier, more relaxed time, when travel meant relaxation, excellent food and a break from the pressures of the world.

But since it began running last September, the Wine Train has been under siege from just about every entity in the area. The reasons are many, but most opponents say the train interferes with the way of life.

During the past few years, the Napa Valley has wrestled with the question of exactly what a winery is. Residents compare excessive traffic with the desire for tourist dollars, and conflict between the Mammon of development with the desire to keep the county agriculture-rural.

Into that charged atmosphere roars the Wine Train, representing to many locals the worst of evils: development, tourism, noise and hype. Not to mention higher taxes. And thus the decision of the Wine Train to serve a non-Napa Valley sparkling wine at brunch smacks of arrogance, said one Napa Valley winery executive.

“In a nutshell, that sums them up,” said the executive, who asked for anonymity. “They claim they’re here to help the Napa Valley preserve agricultural integrity and yet when it comes time to pour a wine of their choice, it’s something cheap from another wine-growing region. They have no one’s best interests at heart except their own.”

“They’ve just come in here and thrown salt in our wounds,” said Norm Manzer, head of a group trying to legally derail the Wine Train. “To threaten someone with the type of project like they have is bad enough, but then they did it without so much as talking with us. From day one it was full steam ahead, ‘catch us if you can.’ ”

Manzer, a State Farm Insurance agent whose office is “within spitting distance” of the train tracks in St. Helena, and many others are sure they can catch the train and stop it dead in its tracks. They feel an Environmental Impact Report will show that the train would destroy the way of life in the Napa Valley.

The Wine Train started Sept. 16 on a temporary schedule, running the 21 miles from the city of Napa to St. Helena, in the heart of the valley, then back again. The original idea was to permit visitors to see the vines and wineries without clogging the roads with cars. Visitors would be able to disembark en route to visit wineries.

The idea of an idyllic, turn-of-the-century excursion immediately met resistence from residents in a rare show of unity. It’s been said that no two wine makers can ever agree on so much as the time of day, so the Wine Train is being seen as unique: the first subject on which almost everyone agrees.

Protesting the smoke from the 1954 Diesel engines, the clatter of the steel wheels on rails, the whine of the engine’s mournful horns, the danger at dozens of track crossings, the cost to taxpayers and other irritants, locals rebelled.

The winery executive said matters were exacerbated when Wine Train officials “never talked to us. They just decided to ram this down our throats, whether we liked it or not.” He said Wine Train officials have been arrogant and distant.

“If anyone ever wanted to write a book on how to do bad community relations, these guys already wrote the book,” said one winery owner, who asked for anonymity because he didn’t want to create animosity with neighbors.

John C. (Jack) McCormack, president and chief executive of the Wine Train, acknowledges the opposition by groups such as Manzer’s Friends of the Napa Valley, which was formed expressly to oppose him. He says the company’s timing was simply wrong.

“Some of the wineries took opposition to the Wine Train to take the heat off the winery definition question,” said McCormack, noting that when the Wine Train project began in 1985, the winery definition issue was just heating up. “If we had started a couple of years earlier . . . ,” said McCormack, implying that the train would have been widely accepted.

“Even now you don’t find as much opposition (to the train) when you talk to wine makers individually as when you talk to them as a group,” he said.

There is no guarantee the Wine Train will ever run a full schedule, and faces the possibility its present limited schedule will also be terminated. Local and state groups are challenging Wine Train’s existence in both the State Supreme Court and in a federal court in Washington.

In a case already extremely complex, the State Supreme Court is to rule soon over whether the state has the authority to require an environmental review of the train. And the Interstate Commerce Commission is reconsidering its original ruling that it has jurisdiction over the train.

One of the key issues is whether the train must submit to the California Environmental Quality Act. Wine Train officials say that if Southern Pacific, which owned the right-of-way before 1987, had wanted to expand service here, it would have been able to do so without scrutiny of an EIR.

Early last year, the ICC ruled that it had jurisdiction over the Wine Train. This would have given Wine Train the right to operate without restrictions from the California Public Utilities Commission. Under ICC jurisdiction, trains are subject to virtually no controls, operating under regulations established in the past century.

Among the rules that Wine Train officials relish is the one that would not require the filing of an EIR.

Friends of Napa Valley and the PUC appealed the ICC ruling to the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington. Before that appeal could be heard, the court last summer ruled in a case involving a small rail spur in Illinois. The court reversed the ICC decision and gave jurisdiction over the spur to the Illinois Commerce Commission.

The ICC then requested that it be allowed to review its decision in the Wine Train case, leading to speculation it will reverse itself.

Evelyn Kitay, an attorney with the office of the general counsel of the ICC, said the Illinois case is unrelated to the Napa case, but “we issued an order to reopen the Napa decision in light of the Illinois case,” she said, adding that there “might be a reversal” of ICC’s earlier decision. Or ICC could rule the same way based on new grounds.

A critical question for the Wine Train, Kitay said, is: “Is there a nexus to interstate commerce?” If not, federal control may not be warranted, she indicated.

McCormack argues that Wine Train is a carrier of goods in interstate commerce as well as a feeder line for Amtrak passenger service, and thus it should be ruled by ICC--which would free it from having to file the EIR.

Opponents fire back that there is no rail service from the Wine Train terminus to the nearest Amtrak station at Martinez, some 20 miles south; passengers must take a bus between the lines. And that there hasn’t been a passenger train in the Napa Valley since the 1920s.

Manzer’s group feels that the EIR will show that the train would make a negative impact on the valley. “If ICC gives jurisdiction back to the PUC, we will kill the train,” said Manzer. “We know that the things that will be found in the EIR will be unmitigateable.”

Because of the crucial nature of the EIR, a group was formed 18 months ago at the suggestion of the St. Helena City Council called ALERT--Alliance for the Environmental Report on the Train. ALERT includes the city of St. Helena, the town of Yountville, Napa County and five local trade groups--Napa County Farm Bureau, Napa County Grape Growers Assn., Napa Valley Vintners Assn., United Napa Valley Associates and Friends of the Napa Valley.

ALERT attorney Michael Riback said the thrust of the ALERT argument is simply that Wine Train is not a means of transportation as much as it is a tourist line.

“In the eyes of ALERT, the Wine Train is not a transportation or commuter operation,” said Riback, “it is a tourist operation akin to the monorail at Disneyland, where you’re taking the ride for the ride’s sake, not to get to a particular destination.”

Manzer calls the Wine Train “nothing more than a bar and restaurant on wheels, plowing its way through the agricultural preserve of the Napa Valley.” And he pointed out that in the local Yellow Pages, Wine Train is listed under “restaurants.”

The EIR, which is being done for Wine Train by a San Mateo company, is due by August.

In the meantime, a series of public meetings has been scheduled to hear questions about Wine Train’s impact on residents, municipalities, businesses, the tax structure and the agriculture of the region.

At a meeting last Thursday night at the Yountville Town Hall, about 40 persons showed up to hear Earth Metrics, a San Mateo company doing the environmental report on the train, discuss its Proponent’s Environmental Assessment.

Then representatives from Napa County, the town of Yountville and the city of St. Helena all made inquiries of Earth Metrics, asking the company to address concerns not mentioned in the PEA report. Further meetings were scheduled.

One of the key problems as far as Manzer and others are concerned is the cost of the train to taxpayers. Friends of the Valley says taxpayers will foot a $6 million bill to pay for improvements to the line, including gate crossings and a rerouting of traffic along State Highway 29 at Trancas Street in Napa, a particularly knotty intersection at the north end of Napa.

McCormack, aware of all the arguments against his train, says his organization will make every effort to keep the valley exactly as it is.

“It is not in our best interests to see the valley turn into a bedroom community of San Francisco,” he says. “We have as much of a stake in keeping the region agrarian as they do.”