Old Farm Winery at Hartland — Attraction in Brambleton

So this will be a bit of a long review, but please read the entire thing. I had only been to the winery 1 time before becoming a club member. The one time before was for a Buffalo Trail Elementary school event that was I think about 2 years ago. Recently I went to visit the "National Botanical Gardens" (not actually owned by the government at all but a private family) and while I was there with my family, we saw that they had a food truck and a few vendors in the pavilion area and there was a wine tasting tent setup from Old Farm Winery and Aurora was there doing tastings. Aurora was great and engaging and powering through her equipment was not working correctly for taking payments and such. While there enjoying our wine tasting, I decided to sign up for your wine club membership as he benefits that Aurora talked about seemed good. I recently decided to go check out the winery and when I went to cash out I was thrown for a loop as there was no way as part of my transaction to tip the bar staff for their service! I had to then start up an awkward conversation about how to tip them and they then struggled with giving me a code to then have to go to Venmo or another service to tip them out or give cash. I typically do not carry cash for security reasons and found that it was just a hassle to have to work directly with the individual to figure out a tip directly with them. It also sparked an EXTREMELY awkward conversation between all of the staff there at the time. As a patron of an establishment (be it winery, brewery, restaurant or other) where there is a component of my experience that has a person servicing me, I expect to have a single transaction for my time spent. It is not only an inconvenience but also makes me not want to come back because the tip conversation was so awkward. I have since made a second trip and knew about the tipping situation so I had some cash, but I needed to consciencely think about the fact that ONLY your winery is different from everywhere else and that I needed to go out of my way to get cash first before I got there. It is obviously a huge point of contention for not just your staff but for everyone else that comes to your winery and expects that it is like everywhere else where someone can use a credit card to pay for their services included as a tip but then has to either ask about it and be fraught with the same issues as I did at first, or WHAT MOST LIKELY HAPPENS is that people just don't pay attention and do not leave a tip at all and then your wait staff is working without the typical tip with what I am only assuming is a typical lower than minimum wage base compensation? As a customer of a food service business I should not need to ask the wait staff how they are compensated to be able to add a tip to my single transaction for my single engagement during a visit. You have a nice facility and your wait staff is so upset about your unique stance on not including tip as an option for customers to include in their bill that they openly talk about how ridiculous it is and make customers feel extremely awkward while there to enjoy the wines. The wines are good and some are very good (like the Meritage). Your food options are honestly not very good and the pizza is laughable and seems like it is frozen pizza bought in bulk from not even some place like Costco (Costco pizzas would be a huge upgrade from what you are selling now) and the pricing for what you get is outrageous. I will not be renewing my membership for next year as I feel like it is not worth it because of the issues with staff tipping has put such a bad taste in my mouth (pun intended) that I see myself going there less than I had planned on originally. Please talk to your staff and figure this out or I fear that they will leave and they are very good and I fear that you will continually suffer high turn-over as new staff comes in to find out how you operate and they will be missing out on typical wait staff compensation because of the hardships with being able to collect tips through your business...

My husband and I were really looking forward to writing a glowing review of the winery after our wedding and reception. Unfortunately as my husband likes to say, I wouldn’t trust these “professional event coordinators” to coordinate a birthday for my dog. The winery itself is a beautiful venue for an event, to be sure. And when I did the initial tour of the facility, Sadaf was the sweetest, most professional young woman. I fell in love with her bight personality and the venue because of it, thinking I would receive that type of service throughout the whole process of wedding planning and the big day, and so I convinced my husband to go over our budget to afford it and everything they said was included. But sadly, the kind, professional service did not happen. Instead, we were passed to the events team, who stated they were professional and could execute our dream wedding just as we imagined. I spent 5 hours putting together a document for Old Farm Winery and their “professional” events team, only to get to my wedding day, walk into the reception and see the dessert table missing desserts, half of the decorations for the tables missing, along with the all important place cards for the seating arrangements not on the tables (which I and my friends and family spent hours more working on, planning, putting together each table in little baggies to make the execution so simple and easy for Laura (our day-of-coordinator that we paid the venue to have) and her team). When i asked Laura where the decorations were, she stated “I couldn’t find them with the other decorations”. She had 3 hours to put out decorations, during which she never asked any of my friends or family for help. I asked my bridesmaids to look during the reception and within 5 minutes they found the “missing” decorations with all the rest of the boxes. This was just one of the major oversights by Old Farm Winery and their team. Laura was rude to myself, the groom, my father-in-law, guests, and family. She made my sister cry for being stuck in traffic with the arch we were getting married under. We offered plenty of help to them by our guests who helped design the tables and make decorations and we were met with “we are professionals we got this.” My father-in-law and other guests were refused drinks during the cocktail hour. Staff then lied saying my husband’s family member received the leftover wine after the wedding (which is in our contract to receive) and finished off the sangria which he didn’t as he doesn’t drink wine and confirmed he did not receive the left over bottles. From the time my husband showed up with our dog (who we had permission in our contract to be a part of the wedding) Laura yelled from half way down the sidewalk that our dog was not allowed on the premises. Even their own company Facebook page as of October 4th 2024 says dogs are allowed on the property. The people who ran our event were incompetent and when we called Sarah to file complaints we were offered 5% ($295), lawyer involvement, and with no apology from Laura for her conduct. When we told them this is a slap in the face and we wouldn’t accept less than 25% reimbursement for all the time, money and emotional trauma, they said all they could do was 10% as hush money with papers to sign stating we wouldn’t write a review. Well, we did not accept their hush money offer and are very disappointed that this is how they respond in light of disastrous customer service from their own staff. They stated “we fulfilled our contract to you.” The bare minimum and ruined our wedding day so bad that we even called our get away car to come get us an hour early because we were so fed up with the service. I don’t want this to happen to any other bride and groom, or any event host considering Old Farm Winery and their event staff to execute their event. Please consider this as a warning so you don’t get the same treatment. We would consider revising our review or removing it if the owner wanted to call and talk with us as this has been...

We just moved to the area and a neighbor had mentioned Old Farm to us. We checked it out on a Friday night with 2 young kids. My wife and I enjoy wine quite a bit but don’t know much about the Virginia options.

The space is great. An area under cover with 10-12 tables or so including the bar area. And then a ton of picnic tables in the lawn areas. Great place when the weather is nice. 5/5

The wine was pretty good. We both tried a flight with 3 whites and 3 reds. I thought the reds we tried were a good deal being in the mid $30s. The white were good but also in the mid $30s and that’s a bit much for me for a white wine unless it is really high quality. 3.5/5.

Being there with the kids we needed to eat. The food options are limited. We got the Boar’s Head meat and cheese and it’s was literally a pre-packed Boar’s head you’d fine in the store. For the kids we got pizza, and yeah it’s not good and was $20 a piece. Now I have heard when they have events they bring in food trucks which would up the food good but we were just there on a normal evening. 2/5.

Living near by, we were hoping this may be somewhere we could go to regularly as a family. And the thing is there are a few different neighborhoods in the “Hartland” area. Has to be well over 1,000 homes. And this is really the only game in town for food and drink being as close as it is. I’m not expert in this business and don’t know what it would take (cost, licenses, etc..) but if this place had a legit pizza oven and was putting out quality pizzas along with the wines, we would probably go once per week.

As it is, not sure how frequently we would go back for a non-event visit. We will check others out in the...