We went to Italy for our honeymoon and booked the 'lunch and
wine tasting in vineyard rows' as part of our stay in
Tuscany.
It started off lovely - we were greeted and had a tour of
the grounds. We were then sat down at a table in the
vineyard rows - the section we were in had another 3 tables.
The couples on all 3 tables were part-way through their
experience with the wine teacher explaining things to them.
The wine teacher then came over to us and poured us 4
glasses of wine and told us the wines we were served. Our
appetizer and first course then arrived altogether, which
was a shame as the lasagne was going cold when we were
eating it. We had to ask for water (which other tables had)
and we weren't given a bucket to swill out our glasses into
(again, which other tables had). Our wine teacher came back
to check on us. We were then served biscuits with dessert
wine.
We noticed that the other tables next to us had been served
more wine and an additional course (the second course),
which we checked after and note it should be included in the
experience.
The experience we booked was sold as a 4-course lunch in the
vineyard rows with wine tasting/wine school - the website
states there are 4 courses and 11 wines included within the
experience.
We spoke to our wine teacher to query the experience. We
were told there had been confusion and that, because the 3
tables next to us had been given their biscuits and dessert
wine, they'd skipped our second course and served us the
same. They apologised and told us that he was then going to
serve us the 3 Super Tuscan wines and asked if we wanted the
second course. We didn't want to have a second course and
wines after dessert when the experience has been planned out
to enjoy them in an order. Initially, we were given 2
bottles of wine as an apology but were still asked to pay
the full price of €105 per person. We then spoke to a
manager and explained that we didn't want the wine and she
begrudgingly gave us €100 back and couldn't help us with a
taxi from the winery.
The winery is beautiful and we appreciated the apologies of
our wine teacher. We were just very disappointed with the
overall experience, especially as we were in Italy for a
special occasion and had been recommended here. We were
barely engaged with during the wine tasting (whereas the
other tables were talked to a lot about the wines and
winemaking which is what we expected from your website
description of the experience), we missed out on our second
course wines, and there was a group of people sat the other
side of our vineyard row playing music which didn't create
the atmosphere we imagined.
