Limestone Terrace Vineyard — Attraction in Fredericksburg

I almost never write negative reviews, but today's experience moves me to write this one. If I could give negative stars, I would. We bought tickets to the Hill Country Holiday Wine Trail; and we drove over an hour to get to Limestone Terrace after friends of ours told us about this winery's sparkling Albariño. [Note: This isn't an easy winery to get to. You have to drive down several miles of poorly maintained, poorly marked, extremely bumpy dirt roads.] Because it was a trek for us, we checked the winery's website to make sure it would be open. The website showed tastings were available Thursdays 3pm-6pm (among other times). So today (Thursday 12/8) we arrived at 3:00, only to find the gate padlocked and no one around. We waited, thinking that maybe they were just late opening; and at 3:14 a man drove down on a 4-wheeler and asked us (through the locked gate) what we wanted. We told him we were there for a tasting, and he said that the winery was closed today for their Christmas party. He offered us no alternatives, so we left. There was no mention of the closing on their website; no sign was on the gate or on other winery direction signs along the roads. Needless to say, our experience was extremely negative ... and we never got to taste their wine, and now we don't care...

Pulled up in a bus at 5:10 and he actually ran out to the bus and said they were closing even though we had a bus with reservations for 12 people and we said we said we could easily be done by their closing time at 5:30. He refused and locked the door and left.

Quite rude and quite a loss of business.

Responded to this comment but upon me immediately emailing, the email was completely ignored so I’m pretty sure this was actually the owner just aiming to imply it was an employee he was unaware of.

Since my review I’ve heard that it’s the best winery to skip anyway due to the poor quality of wine here so we can’t be too upset the owner of this place himself apparently suggested we head to another winery. As he was ready to call it a day. There are many other good ones nearby although this was the one we’d not yet tried. But due to this service...

The people were nice and the mourvedre was pretty good too. We went on a Saturday around noon and wine wasn't being served at the deck up top (which is the main reason we visited), so it was a bit inconvenient to get your wine in the tasting room and then hike up the hill or drive up there and re-park. The other issue was since we were seated outside by the tasting room, when the sprinklers ran the sewage smell was really strong where we were sitting (kinda ruins the aroma of a wine!). Using recycled water is a good thing, but I would suggest maybe running the sprinklers earlier in the morning before guests arrive. 4 stars for the people and the wine, -1 for the other...