TYCOGA Winery & Distillery — Attraction in Iowa

I visited this winery on March 16th. Let me skip to some of the "highlights" of my visit.

When you do a wine tasting, your server will usually begin by asking "So what kind of wine do you like?" This is an easy way for them to suggest to you wines that you might prefer.I usually say, as I did on this day, "I like a wide variety of wines; dry, semi-sweet, and sweet."

Normally at this point, my server would present me with a wine list and make a few suggestions in each category. This time, the server closed the menu that I was looking at and refused to let me view it until I told him my "preferences". He said, "I don't want people leaving and saying our wines are bad because they didn't pick the right ones". Why assume that your guests are clueless about wine?! Closing a menu that a guest is looking through is outright rude.

Frustrated, I handed the server a list of wines that I had written while planing my visit, each one separated into categories of sweetness levels. He then complained, “Well, see, here’s the problem! We have these [grape] varieties in different levels of sweetness!” Never mind that I had already categorized them, maybe..oh geez, I dunno… ask which ones i want?I pointed to the first one on my list, La Crescent (dry).

After tasting the wine he asked, “So what do you think?” I replied, “It has a bit of a tart green apple taste.” He said, “Look, unless you’re a som[melier] I don’t care what flavors you pick up on. I just want to know if you like it or not.” Okay, good to know you’re only interested in moving bottles. At that point I noticed that the wines on the menu did not have flavor descriptions. At some wineries the servers or even the owner would get the opinions of their customers to create flavor descriptions for the wines.

I observed the server conducting another tasting, and I really wouldn't recommend this place for people just getting into wine. Go somewhere that isn’t so tactless, provides flavor descriptors in their menu, and has staff that is willing to make suggestions more specific than just “do you want to go sweeter or dryer?”

I would advise against anyone going here unless you have a specific very style of wine in mind. And even then, good luck! I won't be telling anyone that the wines are bad, they're actually fairly decent; I'll be telling everyone about the rudest service I've ever received at a...

We decided to go tycoga. Thinking it's someplace different, knowing the only food they serve is pizza. I know it's a winery and they want to sell alcohol but all we wanted was something to eat.

The only seating was in the bar hallway/lobby (or outside, but it was windy). Inside they have 6 wingback type chairs with a " coffee table" in front of you (can you imagine trying to chew on a hard crusted Pizza, sitting at the coffee table), 2 tall tables, each with 4 tall, hard, sling stools, no backs (which aren't easy to move on the low pile carpet), or a regular height table with six hard, wood chairs with backs, or a couple chairs at the bar.

Not knowing if a larger group of people would come in we didn't want to take the areas for six people. So we sat at one of the tall tables with hard sling chairs and no backs. They are extremely uncomfortable, too tall to be comfortable, no matter your height.

We were each given a fork wrapped in one small napkin. When the pizzas came out they were very thin, not many toppings (we've had better frozen pizzas than these were and I don't care for frozen pizza). They were impossible to cut with the fork. When you picked them up your hands got black from the underside, from the Wood Fired Pizza. The crust was too hard to chew off. We asked for more napkins and knives and they only had little plastic knives. When questioned about something different we were told that's the only kind they can give us. Which of course there's no way you can cut, with those little plastic knives, the tough crust of the pizza.

I would like to see management sitting in those uncomfortable hard tall stools trying to chew a pizza (or cut one with a little plastic knife), with dirty, blackened fingers and try to enjoy...

My friends and I went to the winery today to celebrate my birthday, we had been planning this and was so looking forward to going there. I had not been there for a long time, my Dad had passed away 2 days prior to us coming so I wasn’t even sure I was wanting to be out in public yet. When we arrived the Man that was working seemed as though we were an inconvenience, I wanted to walk out but my friends wanted to stay so I did. When I said it was my birthday he could have cared less. My friend asked for napkins and he treated her the same as if she was an inconvenience, she also asked for 2 extra olives on her Bloody Mary and they told her (the most you can have is 2) seriously how much do olives cost? The nicest person in the building was the 15 year old boy who served us our pizza. I never give feed back but as much money as we all spent today I felt it necessary to let you know how we were treated. Any winery that I have ever been to they were happy to have the business, I don’t plan on coming back and I plan on telling people how we...