Michael David Winery — Attraction in Lodi

⭐️⭐️⭐️ +1 star because of the owner’s speedy and kind response. Thank you for your response, we will definitely come back and give it another try! We hope to receive a similar experience regardless of whether we decide to purchase a wine or not at the end of the club membership wine tasting. I look forward to visiting again.

I love their wine but since my family got their wine club membership we’ve been feeling quite uncomfortable going there.

It was advertised and repeatedly reminded by staff prior to us joining the club membership that members and guests (total of 4) can go there EVERY DAY for wine tasting with no commitment to purchase any wine. We don’t go in every day like they urged us to do PRIOR to joining; we’ve only gone a couple of times since we purchased the memberships (2-3 months ago) in respect their way of doing business. They have been giving us looks and attitude for not purchasing wines whenever we do go. Now my parents just want to stay home and drink wine instead whenever I’m in town, and I was the one who convinced them to purchase the membership.

If your winery don’t want club members to go in EVERYDAY, maybe change the rules instead of giving us attitude when we bring guests to have a good time. It’s a beautiful venue and we do enjoy their wines so we recommend them to our family and friends but now we’re conflicted. We tell our family and friends there aren’t any commitment to purchase at wine tastings (what a great perk!) when you join the club membership and now it feels like we’re LIARS.

Attitude like “HERE’s your wine”, hurry up and drink it then leave looks, gossip while staring at us drinking and having a chat then comes over unwillingly when we want the next tasting, and the disappointment and body language when we don’t want to purchase any wine right this second (because we have loads of bottles at home already) but we just want to enjoy what comes with the club membership and enjoy a good afternoon and family and friends (all potential customers).

The better experiences we have every time we go the more friends we will invite to try your wines (either at our home or at your winery). Our wine friends are mostly from all over California and sometimes out-of-country. If they like your wines they will buy, but we’re not going to pressure them to buy and certainly don’t want your employees pressuring us to buy when we’re simply enjoying our membership.

We’re really disappointed and I was really surprised and saddened to find out my parents can’t enjoy their club membership without feeling highly pressured to buy wine every time...

I’ve been a member for almost a year now and I have always spoken highly about MDW to my social circle. We love their wine but this review is more about our recent experience and how new management policies in effect are seriously having us reconsider our membership.

We came with 4 other friends (a total of 3 married couples). 1 of our friends is also an MDW member. In the past, each member is allowed free tastings for up to 4 people which is still the case. However, apparently there is a new policy now where the tasting room hosts would not let us accommodate our party of 6 people together. Instead, they made us split our party into 2 separate groups of 3 and wouldn’t let us stand next to each other (even if there was space available). So our experience resulted in having 3 husbands stand together on one side of the tasting room while our 3 wives stood together on a different side. How stupid is that?

The worst for the tasting experience was that we were no longer allowed to try just about anything on the menu. In the past, as a member, the servers would let us try any wine on the list and not limit us to just the tasting flight menu. If a bottle wasn’t open, they’d open a new one for us to try. This would allow us to sample wines that we may potentially be interested in buying. The new policy now is that if there isn’t a bottle “already open”, we just have to take the wine servers word for it that “it’s good” because they’ve been wasting wine with too many open bottles.

As members, we value the tastings to experience new wines to potentially buy more. We also often bought cases from you every quarter when we come in to pick up our shipments. We bring friends who aren’t members who also end up buying wine in decent quantities from you.

I was told by the staff, that a beloved manager recently passed away and that the new manager / management team is now implementing all these new policies. I’m sure they have numbers & profit margins to meet or trying to come into the role with guns slingin’, but there are just some things (great customer experiences) that you have to absorb as the cost of doing business. After this most recent tasting experience, my wife and I along with our other couple friends who also MDW members plan to cancel our membership and explore...

I've been a wine club member at Michael David Winery for about three years now, and it has always been my favorite and most frequently recommended winery. I regularly bring family and friends and typically purchase 4–5 cases a year. What kept us coming back was the welcoming atmosphere and the friendly, knowledgeable staff which are essential to a great wine tasting experience.

Unfortunately, my most recent visit was disappointing and is probably the worst I’ve had at any winery. It seems there has been a recent change in management, along with new policies that, in my opinion, have negatively impacted the overall experience.

My friend and I are both wine club members, and each of us is allowed to bring up to four guests. In the past, this was never an issue, we could sit together and enjoy the tasting as a group. However, under the new policy, groups larger than four are now required to split up. Alternatively, if we choose to sit together, only one membership’s free tastings are honored, and the rest of the guests are charged. On a recent visit with three couples (husbands and wives), we weren’t allowed to sit together without additional charges, even though both my friend and I are members. This made for an awkward and much less enjoyable experience.

Another disappointing change is the restriction on wine sampling. As members, we used to be able to request tastings of wines not on the standard tasting menu even if the bottle hadn’t yet been opened. The staff was always generous about letting us try something we were considering purchasing. Now, if a bottle isn't already open, we're told we can’t taste it. It’s especially frustrating when the wine host recommends bottles but doesn’t allow us to sample them first. This change feels counterintuitive and detracts from the experience we’ve always valued.

I'm sharing this feedback in the hope that management reconsiders these new policies. Michael David has always been a special place, and I’d love to see it return to the warm, flexible, and customer-focused experience it...