Kelsey B.
Yelp
My boyfriend and I were up in Sonoma for their international film festival. We came to this tasting room one afternoon due to its good reviews here.
My boyfriend assists in beverage buying for the Hillstone Restaurant group (they own Rutherford Grille, Houston's, and many more totaling in 47 locations across 12 states). He told the woman pouring the wine of his job and politely her if they comp tastings for people in the industry. She looked at him skeptically and asked, "Do you have a card?" As we were there for the festival, he was not carrying a card. I would have understood if she'd said, "No I'm sorry I'm not allowed to waive tasting fees unless you have a card." But instead, she kept going back and forth about whether or not she could do it. It was clear that she could have if she wanted to, but was not going to because she thought he was lying. Not a huge deal by itself, I let it go.
We decided to share a tasting. We sat at one of the tables off to the side. Overall, wine was meh. The best one was definitely the Gap's Crown Pinot Noir. The chardonnay and rose were warm when she poured them. She lost count of how many wines we'd tasted and again gave us the impression she thought we were trying to pull some funny business when we told her we had one left.
We walked up to the counter to pay and she ignored us for a good 10-15 minutes as she attended to the other party at the counter. We finally were able to pay for our tasting and left a tip mostly just to be classy.
Overall, just an unpleasant experience. We're used to being treated very graciously, but all combined we felt unwelcome. Would not recommend