Island Winery — Attraction in Hilton Head Island

We had a bit of a complex start to our experience. As you all know, when vacationing on an island, you don’t always make plans well ahead of time. Some activities are based on the weather, as you will notice by the flow of customers when you visit here. We made our couples package reservation about 3 hours before we arrived. The website does say that the invoice will be sent WITHIN 12 hours, and the receipt sent right away. I called, and they said no problem, you can still come in, just show the receipt and respond to the email that you will be coming sooner than the invoice might be sent(they weren’t sure exactly what time the invoice would be sent WITHIN 12 hours). When we got there, the attendant gave us a lot of grief about this and wouldn’t let us proceed. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t send the invoice right away on an island(island/vacation time mentality?), or be reluctant to serve someone when they have a receipt in hand, and have already spent $75 on your wine, likely to spend a lot more. She told us to come back tomorrow. After explaining our tight schedule, she eventually came around and let us continue to taste with just the receipt of sale because we were leaving the next morning. We came really close to asking for our money back right before she complied. Good thing she did, because they would have been out $300 on an wine sale. The service sucked, but the wine was decent. The cheese board was nothing special. 3 domestic cheeses, a few crackers, and a handful of grapes. With the recent popularity of charcuterie, this is pretty bland. If you open a bottle of wine that you bought, you must finish it and they refuse to re cork or give you the cork back. Note: only one of the wines has grapes that originate on or near the island(found wildly). ALL others are imported domestically. You aren’t really buying anything unique except the...

We were a group of 4 that visits a lot of wineries. I know this goes against the majority of reviews here but the 2 gals running the place were pretty rude.

Immediately when we walked in the door they were way too aggressive in asking how many tastings we wanted. We hadn't even had a to think about it and there was no other customers in the place so it's not like we had to rush. How many tastings depends on more information, like what kinds of wines do you serve, how many wines do you get to taste, how large are the pours, etc. Jeez, give us a moment to process everything! They also insisted we'd like xxx wine even though we told them we don't like that particular grape. It was almost an argument. You get 6 tastes, why would I pick a wine made with a grape I don't like?

On another note, the wines were pretty decent. HOWEVER, if you go to a restaurant and the service is awful but the food is great, how likely are you to return? We'd never ever return to this winery due to the service. We were here for a week and went to a ton of places, this was the only place with a negative experience.

UPDATE: I've updated my review because of the reply received. I respect the fact that my review was acknowledged and the 1 start review I had left was pretty harsh. You also have to keep in mind our experience was not typical as seen by many...

Came here for a friend’s 30th, we had 10 people. We did not make reservations, however, we got here at 12:40 and the place was empty with only one other table of 6 sitting in the back room. The woman immediately asked us if we had reservations, we said no. She said we needed to split up our table, which we said sure. She just kept repeating her self you need to make reservations, which we finally replied if you want us to leave we will, she said no, no that’s fine. Made the experience really uncomfortable, we didn’t feel welcomed and when I say we were the only people at the place besides one other table in the back, it basically echoed when we talked. She than walked over and told the other table in the back how rude it was to come to a place and not make a reservation first, even though there was no one in the place besides us and we could clearly hear her talking about us. Very unwelcoming, wine was decent at least. Went to a brewery down the street after a little (Hilton head brewery) much more welcoming, friendlier staff and accepted us...