Signor Vineyards | Downtown — Attraction in Fredericksburg

Yesterday my husband and I decided to stop by a winery in town after running errands to grab a couple bottles of wine to take home. We’re locals and there were a few urban tasting rooms we haven’t been to together yet so we drove around to a few looking for who had parking (considering it was a very busy festival weekend) and landed on Signors new tasting room off Main St.

It was pretty quiet considering the local traffic but we were approached by 2 employees who immediately greeted us with disapproving looks on their faces. They saw we had our baby with us and asked if we were members - I stated that we had recently cancelled due to a medical emergency and that I had just been there with my son and my friends 2 kids a couple weeks prior. They stated that didn’t matter and that they were under a strict no children policy that should have been enforced the last time I was there. Apparently they have a fairly new rule that only members can bring their children.

While I understand and respect company policies, there is a training that should be given to employees when communicating these things with guests. Instead of trying to rudely push us out of the tasting room, the disappointing experience could have gone quite differently. Tell the guest the policy, see that they have already taken lengths to patron your business, say that you’ll make an exception since we’re already here as a courtesy. Instead, they argued back and forth with me and even refused when I said I would be happy to speak to a manager or call one of the few contacts in my phone I had who work for the business.

When I stood my ground, they finally made a call to someone (which is ridiculous the company doesn’t empower on-site employees to make simple decisions like this without fear of retaliation) and then told us they would seat us as a one time exception but of course in an area outside where I’ve never seen them seat anyone, with no other patrons, as if we were in exile. Meanwhile my son sat quietly in his stroller the entire time.

We obviously did not take home any bottles as planned as we were such an inconvenience to them, which meant we had to make one more stop on the way home to get the wine we came there for.

I’ve been in customer service in the hospitality space for over 20 years and would implore management to do better when training employees on how to talk to guest, handle information sharing and the ultimate goal of customer satisfaction. The funny thing is is that they’ve been sending text to try to welcome back past members and I was seriously considering re-signing back up but there’s absolutely no way I’d do that after this...

Update: I did another Signor wine tasting at the original 290 location and the red wine was awesome! I realized that my prior review which is 👇 below was because they did not pour the red wines at the correct temperature and some where not aired out/decanted prior to the wine tasting which made a world of a difference.

Prior review:

Three stars because I was not a fan of the red wine but I did love the Chardonnay and Rosé! The staff is nice and I enjoyed the live music. The charcuterie board was delicious! Looking forward to coming back and trying the reds that the new wine maker, Michael Barton makes for Signor vineyards. (He makes...

We're gonna start off first with saying DAMN this place is nice!! Extremely friendly staff, (it's almost like they enjoy where they work) they know their stuff.... And made ALL the right suggestions Stephanie was incredibly welcoming and knew exactly what to bring us per her suggestions... This is for damn sure the kind of place that we will continue to visit and even sign up with... Oh and their Margherita Flat Bread is to kill for (But I didn't) everyone should come and hang out here it's most absolutely definitely the place to visit!!...