How to Treat Customers at Wine Tastings

Earlier this year, I celebrated another year around the sun, by driving 1.5 hours to a Boutique Winery and Restaurant.

The setting: a rural sub-tropical farm complete with grapevines, dry grass and the odd cow. The country serenity was broken only by a half dozen bothersome blowflies (But hey, this is Australia!) and the delightful conversation of our lunch guests.

Visiting a boutique winery/vineyard was exciting. I was more than ready for a filling country-style lunch and accompanying wine tasting. And, having worked for a large Australian wine operative some years back, and attending wine tastings here and there, I do feel qualified to comment on this experience.

Really, I should have raised a red flag at the sight of the sad-looking vines that appeared to be merely for decoration. Not the dinky-di thing.

It wasn’t too long before we discovered the lunch menu was profoundly limited, more of a snack food menu. I liked the sound of a grazing platter but the Man of the House, who is a hot meal/red meat and mash kind of guy, would have preferred something more hefty than salad, cold meat and cheese. (none of which he eats cold). So he went a little hungry for his birthday meal, eating just a couple of slices of bread.

NB. (the restaurant had been alerted this was a birthday celebration).

Then there were problems with the wine-tasting experience, the main attraction of having lunch at this restaurant. But not all of our party were participating in the wine tastings.

To our surprise, the staff insisted that only the ‘paying’ wine-tasting participants could sit up at the bar, ie. next to their spouses while they tasted the wines.

Non-drinking spouses, (who were the beer and mixer drinkers) were banished to remain at the allocated dining table towards the rear of the dining hut during the entire wine-tasting experience, some distance away.

This felt uncomfortable and a tad separatist. We were ostracizing our spouses and friends. This detracted significantly from our overall birthday experience.

The Wine Tasting

The wine-tasting portions offered were barely adequate. A small mouthful is not really enough to detect the full aromas, scent and taste of the wine – paying for a small mouthful of six wines.

Please note, at many other wineries, tastings are free and fulsome. Two or even three mouthfuls at least and even then, they’re still free or, of nomimal cost.

No matter how persuasive my laconic, ‘ocker’ friend was, the bar attendant flatly refused to pour more than a mouthful of wine, in his tasting glass.

Her reasoning:

“I have to be responsible with alcohol. I cannot serve more than the equivalent of one alcoholic drink, in total, for the ‘tasting experience.’

You have to be able to drive home,” she added in her husky, forthright tone.

What if you were to have an accident?” she postulated.

Explaining that we had two non-drinking guests accompanying us who could, and would be driving home and reinforced there was no way we’d be taking the wheel. But the staff member, a German exchange student, reinforcing the stereotype, stoicly refused to yield to our pleas.

“We could not have you driving on the road if you had tasted more than just one glass full in total.” {This is not their responsibility once we leave the premises}.

So.. okay. We were getting nowhere with the German.

Ten minutes later, over our lunch grazing platter snacks, our waitress asks,

“Would you like any more drinks? “

“Another glass/bottle of wine perhaps?” (Which of course, would be added to the bill).

“Yes, I will have another Shiraz, please.”

“The Shiraz? Of course!”

Huh?

Yes, we had a lovely day, thanks to our kind friends.

Due to the drawbacks cited above, we won’t return.

What Could They Do Better?

• Offer a more consistent and considerate customer service
• Double the tasting serves
• Have friendlier staff willing to share the history and development of the winery or some interesting factoid of conversation
• An expanded menu with hot options for fussy Moths. (Men of the house)

On the plus side, one of their red wines was of a reasonable quality. My friend purchased two bottles to take home.  

FYI – Fascinating correspondence received when I sent in my feedback.

“Hi Amanda,

Many thanks for your email, and taking the time to give us your feedback. We do highly value and appreciate this. We are really pleased to hear you had a lovely day and enjoy the visit and wine overall.

We recognise, and agree our food menu and some resources are very limited being a small boutique cellar door. Unfortunately, we do not have a restaurant kitchen, and so we focus on food to complement the wine being grazing platters and salads.

Expansion, and a restaurant is something we are considering in the future, but presently we only promote and cater to what we can successfully deliver in our busiest times with the facilities we have.

It is disappointing to hear you didn’t feel the wine taste volumes were sufficient. Our standard practise is to pour 6 x 25 ml equating to 1 standard glass of wine to ensure customers can monitor their wine intake. We also have an obligation to ensure we are serving alcohol responsibly by law. Whilst we practise best practice to assist customers and remain compliant,  we would have be more than happy to offer another taste as it suited on request.

We sincerely apologise your partner was unable to come up to the tasting bar, it is not intended to be rude, but have just 10 places at the bar. We do get very busy and so unfortunately have to limit these places to the guests participating in the wine tasting.

We can only apologise we did not meet your expectations on this occasion within our current business modal, but hopefully we can in the future with an expanded operation.

If there if anything we can do on the short term Amanda, please don’t hesitate to ask. We do highly value repeat business.

Kindest regards,“

My response in return:

Hi ***

Thank you for your reply and explanations.

I understand the compliance with responsible service of alcohol but wish to point out that we did explain to the bar waitress on the day that we had a designated non-drinking driver and we were not driving that day. I also wish to point out that we ordered and paid for more drinks, which was no problem. This seems to be somewhat of a contradiction in your policy. I am all for safe driving and do not drink if I am driving but it does seem terribly unfair to lump all guests in the ‘driving’ basket!

Please note my friend did in fact request another/larger serving but was told it was not possible.

FYI – I attended two wineries in other locations, recently, which was far more generous in their portions. So this was the reason we both felt the portions offered were skimpy.

Having said all of that, I simply wanted to advise you of my feelings in response to your email. I appreciate your detailed response but do not agree with your rationale. I do hope that you are able to expand the food menu in the future and wish you well in your business endeavours.

Cheers,

Amanda”

No further response was received.

This company repeatedly sends promotional advertisements to a facebook group I administer. It’s a group that has an attractively large following and ads on the group are posted for free.

Since visiting this winery, I have so far denied their posts. I don’t want to promote a place I was dissatisfied with, myself.

My Questions:

• Should I allow this winery to post free ads in my book group?
• Were my expectations of the establishment too high?

• Do wineries charge for wine tastings in your area?
• Can a restaurant call itself a restaurant, without a restaurant kitchen?

• In your opinion, what could they have done better? (besides proof-reading)

Bloggers’ Brains Trust: I would love to hear your response in the comments.