E K.
Yelp
I never write reviews, but I feel compelled to let people who are looking for a wine tasting experience know about my experience. I booked a cave tasting (tasting with cheese plate in their wine cave) for 8 ladies on a Tuesday afternoon. Upon arrival, the young man in the tasting room was surprised to see 8 of us for tasting as he said he only had a reservation for 4 (the cave tasting is done in pairs so when I booked with the manager she entered it as 4 pairs =8 people). I knew I had made the reservation so I asked him to please check again. The problem he said was that "I don't think we have enough food for 8 but let's start the tasting while we find out". At that point he started taking out wine glasses and placing them on the bar. I pointed out that I had booked a wine cave tasting which I thought meant we would taste in the cave. His reply was that "it would be too hard to bring all of the glasses up to the cave now... so we will taste here and end up in the cave at the end "(for a glass and the cheese plates -they said they thought they found enough food). I had organized this tasting and was somewhat embarrassed, I didn't want to argue so we started the tasting in the tasting room. The tasting started with him asking " who wants white and who wants red? Once decided he started pouring, it was a bit confusing (he was pouring different kinds of reds and whites) so I asked if he had a tasting guide for us to follow along so we knew what he was pouring. He pulled out one guide and gave it to me, but did not offer the rest of the ladies one. As we tasted, I realized there were no buckets in which to pour the wine we did not wish to finish. My 85 yo aunt reached over the bar and thought she was pouring into a bucket but it turned out to be something to hold paper...oh dear, how awkward. I would think that this would have been a signal that they forgot to put one on the counter, but no, I ended up pouring my post taste wine into another wine glass. After about 20 minutes he was ready to take us to the wine cave. It was a nice walk up to the cave, the grounds are beautiful. Once in the cave we saw four small wooden boards with cheese, nuts, dried fruit-a nice selection. We had each been instructed to bring a wine glass with us and into these he poured us a red. He then said he was going to leave us ladies to enjoy the wine and cheese and he would be back in about 20 minutes (this is when I thought we were going to be educated about their wine). He came back 20 or so minutes later and said he had one more red to share. He poured our wine and answered questions we asked, but very little if any education or promoting of the wines we had tasted.
My impressions-
1. I think the young man at the tasting counter was a nice, but a bit defensive and rattled about our large party (there was no one else tasting in the winery at the time). After a few minutes he loosened up and tried to make the best out of the situation, but he seemed unprepared and uneducated about the wines he was pouring.
2. Not sure why there was a communication issue with the booking as I booked directly with the tasting room manager, Kimble
3. We were disappointed that the tasting was not done entirely in the cave as was described (and as seen on their website )when we made the reservations-it felt disjointed.
4. I was embarrassed that I had set up this experience as we were limited to doing only two wine tasting experiences on our trip(some of the ladies traveled from out of state for this northern Ca wine tasting experience.) I did a lot of research to find wineries I thought would be great experiences-this one fell short.
5. Some of the wines were good, but because of the lack of information given about the wines during our tasting-not one of us bought a single bottle. Isn't the point to educate and promote to sell the wine?
6. I spoke to the manager, Kimble,to let her know about our experience. I told her that despite the fact that we received their advertised "special two for one tasting"($60 for two instead of the normal $60/pp) that the $240 we paid was not worth the experience we received and did not match what they had advertised. I asked her if it was possible to get any kind of a discount/refund? She said no, she could not refund any money, but that she could offer us one complimentary tasting. I told her I wasn't going to be traveling to the wine country any time in the near future and asked if there was any other way to compensate. She apologized for our unfortunate experience and thanked me for calling to let her know, but said there was nothing more she could do.
My advice- choose your wine tasting experience carefully, they are expensive and you want to feel as though you are getting what you paid for. Check out Failla, we had an awesome experience there.
I gave one star for the cave setting and some of the red wine, I took four off for our disappointing experience.
