Saddler's Creek Wines — Attraction in Pokolbin

I can not tell you what a pleasure it was to not only visit and enjoy Saddler’s Creek Wines, but to experience their customer service over the past two months.

Back in September we visited Saddler’s Creek as the last stop on our wine tour with Chef Jimmy (an amazing experience where he pairs food he cooks from fish market with the wines offered at the wineries). The grounds are gorgeous, and everything has a charm and winery elegant sort of vibe. We sat under their covered porch, and Scott walked us through their wines.

While all the wine's we tasted were good, the reserves were unbelievably good. The Maria Reserve Chardonnay has a delightful combination of fresh fruit and a nice butter toasted note. The reds by contrast were delightfully jammy, bursting with fruit, and well balanced oaked notes. A surprise was their Wild White, a unique blend of Semillon, Riesling, Arneis and Fiano sourced from the Hunter Valley and Clare Valley regions. The resulting wine had an amazingly well balanced mouthfeel, a bright pop of tropical fruits and refreshing citrus. These wines were exactly what we'd been looking for on our tours in both the Barossa and the Hunter, enough so, that I proceeded to buy 2 cases (a mix of Maria Chardonnay, , and Wild White) and freight them back to the states. (plus a bottle of Wild White to enjoy before we left the country).

The process of freighting the wine back was fairly easy. We completed the transaction at Saddler's wine room, and then they reached out the shipper with my payment and information. The wine took about 3 weeks to get to me, during which Saddler's team were in contact with me all along the way), and everything was well packed. Unfortunately, we had a little mix up, and instead received more Wild White than Reserve Shiraz. After notifying them, they got back to me relatively quickly, expressing their apologies for the mix up.

Due to events in my personal life, I unfortunately wasn't able to regularly communicate with them, but they were wonderfully patient with me as we resolved this through October and November. We eventually worked out an amicable solution, in which I'd say they went above and beyond my expectations (and were incredibly friendly doing so).

Overall, they're such a pleasure to work with, I can't recommend Saddler's Creek's staff or wines enough. If I ever get back to Australia, I'll definitely plan to go back and visit to get more of their great wine (or if they ever start regularly start shipping to the states I'll have it even sooner!). Cheers to the...

What a disappointment. Saved this visit as our last spot of the day as I wanted to buy their reds. Met with a scowl and constant look of distaste from Pauline from the moment we walked in. Before a seat was taken and before a single tasting glass was poured it was obvious she either hated her job, was ready to go home or feels that people who are able to have a good time, laugh and enjoy each others company must be drunks.

The judgement and look of disapproval of a bunch of woman engrossed in each other's conversation, stories and laughter over wine displeased her.

After having enough of being spoken to like children and being looked at like wirh a scowl no matter how many thank yous we offerred and tried to engage. We were accused of being drunk but refusing to advise who, when or why. We left disgusted and calling Pauline out on her rude,dismissive and quiet possibly the most sour, unwelcoming approach to customer service.

Saddlers lost over $400plus dollars in sales that afternoon as we had all come to enjoy their reds after multiple recommendations. The manager refunded our money, apologised profusely and welcomed us back after experiencing something that should never have happened. She remediated the situation best she could. We were grateful for her approach.

Saddlers...in customer facing roles please consider if that person is best suited to that environment. A smile , a warm welcome and some training for Pauline on how to be inviting would be a great. Something so simple could have been avoided and ruined our afternoon in the Hunter. Kudos to your manager. But sadly only 1 of 9 of us will be back.

Hope Pauline thinks about her approach and the impact of being miserable to her customers ruining their experience and costing the business...

We were a group of 3 families of 11 ppl consisting of 6 adults and 5 kids under 8.

Our kids had a good time with the soda tasting and were able to explore the grounds and gardens. One of the children picked up flowers from the succulents and the others followed, when the adults saw this we reprimanded them for stealing the flowers from the garden bed.

We had a 12:30 booking on the Sat and the table wasn't ready till 12:50pm, one family was stuck in the long weekend traffic and didn't arrive till 1:10pm. We ordered lunch at 1:10pm and there was a busy time in the kitchen with 1 chef in the caravan. So the food probably took 40 minutes to arrive, which wasn't too bad as the adults were wine tasting, but the kids were all high on the soda tasting and the lollies that came with them.

At 2pm, There was a blonde shorter lady who became pretty upset with us and informed us there was a booking for the table we were in and asked us to move to the picnic gardens. The restaurant was about 25% full and there were plenty of other tables, so we found this a bit strange and confronting. One of our friends was still half way through their burger.

It was unpleasant and unwelcome, she became irate.

When we were leaving, I apologised to our wine server and offered $20 for the flowers our kids collected. This was politely declined, she said she would like us back, "but next time leave your kids at home".

So even though they offer a kids soda tasting, they don't like kids, point taken.

We marked on the order form which wines we were going to purchase, but decided not to after...