North 42 Degrees Estate Winery & Bistro 42 — Attraction in Town of Essex

North 42 Winery was our second stop on a pre-planned wine sampling afternoon (yesterday, July 8) with my daughter who has recently moved to Red Lake (6 hours NorthWest of Thunder Bay) and her new boyfriend. They are only in the area for 3 days before they travel to Toronto to visit with friends, so I wanted to show them the best of what the area has to offer. After our experience, I can assure you, I wished I had spent that time back at the winery we left to come to North 42. I had made reservations 3 weeks in advance of us coming. The gentleman that answered took down my information and was thrilled that we had chosen the winery to do a sampling of the best wines from North 42. When we arrived, we were hastily greeted at the door and I gave her my name and that we had a reservation for 3:00pm. She looked at me very strangely and asked if we were here for a wine tasting appointment. I explained that I had a reservation for 3:00pm, and she turned away and simply pointed to a gentleman near the bar and said he would be looking after us. We were not invited in, told where to wait, we simply stood there until the gentleman finally came over and said to follow him. He took us out on the patio and handed us the menus. We expressed an interest in doing a flight and he explained what our options would be. My youngest daughter was with us, and she is not of legal drinking age, so our question to him was what our choices of non-alcoholic drinks would be. He looked up at us, and said with a bit of a grimace..."Uhhh...water?" like we were asking some very detailed complex question. We made our wine selections for our flights and the server brought out the first one. As we were enjoying our choices, we overheard him as he approached another table say "I'm sorry for the delay, but I had to open many new bottles of wine." Since we were the only other table in at that time, it doesn't take a genius to know that he was implying that we were the reason for his delay. Now I'm quite sure, opening bottles of wines at a winery, for flights, is part of the requirement of a server. We were made to feel like it was a chore for him. We also were interested in ordering a charcuterie board for us to enjoy and he very bluntly stated that the kitchen was closed. When making the reservation, this was not mentioned. If I had known ahead of time, I would have either changed our reservation to a later time (if the kitchen opened later), or I would likely decided to choose another winery that offered a small menu. From beginning to end, this experience (at what was once my favourite winery along the wine route on County Rd. 20) has left me feeling like my time would have been better spent trying out a new winery that I haven't been to yet. My daughter and I both love the Sparkling Sauvignon Blanc and I have purchased many items in the past from both your Lavender Boutique and orders of scones from the Bistro for special occasions. And then to top it off, my daughter and her boyfriend were ready to purchase 4 or 5 items from the Serenity Lavender Gift Store, and the machines/computer system went down, and they were told their items couldn't be purchased. An unfortunate chain of disappointing events yesterday will make me re-think putting North 42 Winery on my list of places to visit in the future when we have friends...

How disappointing!!! We came back here on a wine tour about 3 wks ago.. we first visited this establishment a few years back when the tasting was literally under some stairs in an old building .. But the service was good and the wine was ok.. Well we have been hearing such great things from our friends we decided to give it another shot. The upgrades to the buildings are amazing.. The view from the restaurant spectacular. We had a great lady at the bar for the tasting (wish I could remember her name- short spiky hair super friendly) everyone was having fun until one of the corks got stuck!! She was struggling so one of the other tasters offered to help.. She let him (admittedly probably shouldn't have however there was zero other staff around and the bar was packed) well ."Michael" one of the staff yelled at her infront of everyone - "what's wrong with you you NEVER let a guest touch the wine" (at this point everyone is starting to get uncomfortable- the gentleman apologized saying he was only trying to help.. He would buy that bottle) Michael wouldnt even acknowledge him- he proceded to "scold " the lady infront of everyone.. I left in search of a manager and finally found one and explained what happened - she didnt seem to care! I returned to the bar and the poor lady was clearly embarrassed she apologized to everyone and tried to keep the atmosphere cheery but it was too late.. And then HE CAME BACK AGAIN TO YELL AT HER!! He told her to "turn around " so he could address her- now everyone at the bar was agitated- so I simply asked for his name - which he reluctantly told me- and I told him that was quite enough! I asked him if he was a manager- no- a supervisor- no "just a fellow co-worker" yes!!! I proceeded to tell him he just lost this establishment a lot of money because no one from our group or the other party would be purchasing anything! I then found Shelley the "other or actual I'm still not sure" manager and told her that he came back again and how umprofessional he was! Even if she shouldnt have let that man help her how dare he act like that in front of all these customers! She had the decency to apologize but I do not believe she ever spoke with him.. Needless to say this is not a stop our wine group will ever make again and ive told all of our co workers about our awful experience! How embarrassing... Esp when you can see that they have put a lot of money into the...

The wine here is good, easily a 4 out of 5 stars, however, as we know it's not all about the product and there is something to be said about the service.

We are staying at a local bed and breakfast for the weekend and we made dinner reservations here almost two months ago only to have them cancelled a couple days before we arrived. We were curious to the reason for the cancellation and naturally assumed when we showed up for a glass this afternoon that a wedding had been booked which was the reason for which they couldn't accommodate our existing reservation (if this was the case we would have totally understood). When we were leaving we asked about our reservation, hoping perhaps we could still get in for dinner tonight if it was an oversight and we learned that the menu was changed to a different type of set menu (with wine pairings throughout) and only select guests were invited. Obviously this rubbed us the wrong way because we would have gladly kept our existing reservation even with the change in mind knowing that set menus are expensive at wineries are expected and aren't cheap anyways. Now we have been left without a reservation on a Saturday night for a trip we planned almost two months ago - it certainly doesn't feel nice being treated like a second class citizen.

Then as we were leaving we were waiting to check out with bottles we were purchasing for family who had recommended us here we were stopped at the checkout. The lady in front of us had several bottles of wine and the cashier informed her if she bought 4 more she would get one for free (this is great, I appreciate when an establishment informs their customers how to get the most of of their money), however, she advised us that we had to wait until the customer went back into the other room to pick out her other four bottles before she could check out our three bottles.

If you are looking for a winery that treats you like a second class citizen this place is for you. If you are looking for a proper full on wine experience with a great dinner that won't get cancelled check out Two Sisters or Foreign Affairs in the Niagara area, you won't be disappointed like we were here (plus the wine is better).

The reason this review got 2 stars instead of 1 is because the wine is decent but the service is trash and a 0 stars rating isn't possible on Google...