Flowers Vineyards & Winery — Attraction in Healdsburg

Took a party of 10 here to celebrate a birthday on 12/31/21. The entire experience was ruined by a female hostess on our way out. Our group congregated by the fireplace for a picture the hostess agreed to take. She took a few pictures but not everyone in our group was ready. I asked if she could please take one more. She replied saying she took several and that the area we were in is sanitized after each guest (in other words we needed vacate the space). When attempting to explain this disappointing experience to two other hostesses outside, all we got was an “I’m sorry that happened” with laughter in the background.

My issue: 1) don’t agree to take our picture if you didn’t want to…find someone else to do it; 2) if being in that space was an issue for sanitary reasons, she could’ve politely informed us of that before taking “several” photos of us there; 3) she already took “several” pictures, what’s one more going to hurt; 4) the manager could’ve offered to redo the picture for us; 5) the manager could’ve offered to address the employee in question who we pointed out; 6) the manager could’ve offered up something/anything to smooth over the situation.

After reading the handful of negative reviews, I agree, management needs to reevaluate some of it’s staff. One Yelp review mentioned their suspicions of being treated unfairly due to race. I can’t help but wonder if that was the case here as well. However it does seem like the rudeness noted on Google and Yelp is indiscriminate.

I will say Peter was amazing and incredibly...

Reply to the owner’s response: I don’t know if you outsource the team that answers your phone calls to a 3rd party (your phone number listed online) but we called 4 times that day to clarify and each time they kept saying in a dismissive tone that they didn’t know why it was cancelled. And then we never heard back. All other wineries in the area reached out to us personally at least the day of to let us know if they were staying open or closed.

And no, difficulty in obtaining a reservation at the other wineries was not due to evacuations. They specifically told us that it was due to us trying to book reservations so last minute and that their reservations were full.

— Extremely unprofessional winery. My boyfriend made a reservation for us a few weeks ago in advance. They suddenly sent us a cancellation notice email TODAY when our reservation is for tomorrow. The office claims they don’t know why it was cancelled and that no other reservations are available tomorrow. They will not do anything to rectify this situation, and all other wineries in the area are fully booked since it’s the day before. Cannot believe how unprofessional...

Beautiful winery in the Healdsburg area. Pretty accessible by bike from downtown (which is what we did).

Flowers was recommended by our concierge as a nice stop for lunch on our bike ride. There is a check in process (pretty standard during Covid) where you get a taste of the rose.

After getting seated, the woman who took care of us explained our lunch package and asked whether we wanted the chardonnay or pinot noir. Each person gets a choice and a half bottle of what we choose. We chose to do one of each so we can taste both. This was a great choice, because both wines were delicious.

The lunch was delicious. It was more substantial than a charcuterie spread but not super heavy, perfect for a summer day! There were two loaves of freshly baked bread (still warm!), an eggplant caponata, a beet hummus with crudite, a goat cheese tart, a salmon rillette, and some almonds. All the produce are local and organic.

Highly recommend for a relaxing winery lunch. The outdoor space is very spacious (no need to worry about social distancing) and beautiful. Lots...