Alexis Bailly Vineyard & Winery — Attraction in Marshan Township

On Sunday, June 29th, my best friend surprised me with a picnic lunch date at Alexis Bailly Winery in Hastings, MN. My friend, Joelle lives in Stacy and I in Hugo. I mention this only because the drive was not only pleasant, but WELL WORTH IT!! OMG! Let me tell you:

The grounds, main building and the "Yert" (tent like shelter) she rented for the afternoon were absolutely lovely, tranquil, bucolic, and immaculate. In the back of the main building where the live Salsa band was playing that afternoon could only be described as pastoral! Then add to that having the wonderful music filling the air, and looking out from wherever one is sitting and seeing the vineyards - well, it was the BEST AFTERNOON BIRTHDAY GIFT I could have ever received!!!

Aside from the venue itself, let me tell you about the proprietors of this extraordinary piece of heaven here in little ol' Minnesota . . . Chet, and his wife Andrea own the vineyard. They were the fantastic!! So genuinely interested in accommodating us - making sure we had anything and everything we needed for our special day. The bartender, "Tamru" (I think I got that right) was so engaging, cheerful and pleasant.

Really, it was probably the BEST BIRTHDAY I've ever experienced. My best friend who is an amazing chef, brought "French themed food", which we shared with the owners. We tasted their great wine, and bought some to take home.

If you really, really want to make someone feel really special, or have a special occasion to celebrate, I highly recommend you do it at the Alexis Bailly Winery!

I intend to go back on the Sundays they have live jazz music.

Lastly, I want to personally THANK Joelle (my Bestie) and Chet, Andrea (owners) and Tamru (bartender) for taking part in making my birthday such an incredibly joyful and memorable experience!!

Most Appreciatively! jeanne...

Happy to have learned that I will NEVER come here again -- I went here during a performance of an opera last week. We were seated near the back, as there was a large crowd, and the manager (I'm guessing, but I saw that his name was Tom) proceeded to reprimand his teenage employee about TWO FEET away from the back of the huge crowd, loud enough for most of the back of the audience to hear, and for a good solid 3-5 MINUTES. The discussion was over something generally mundane (their "wine club") and not something that needed to be talked about anywhere other than in a private area; it was not an emergency situation. I have worked in customer service for over 20 years and have never seen this behavior out of a supposed manager/professional before. Additionally, Tom was one of the people who was selling wine in their little stand alone shack about 10 feet behind us, and he could not care less that a performance was going on, blustering at the top of his lungs to people (which I understand that you're there to sell a product, but I would think that it'd be in respects to the performance going on -- nope!). I actually said something to him about how it was unbelievable that he would have an interaction with an employee in front of a crowd and had a fellow audience member get up and say "thank you" to me after he made a passive- aggressive, rude comment about us having an outside (nonalcoholic!) beverage there, after I had already bought a bottle of wine. It was appalling, and I plan on never going back. Oh, and to top it off, their wine is...

Have been going here for years now. The wine is good and we have always enjoyed the atmosphere until today. As the place was closing and we were getting our stuff to leave an employee proceeded to start being extremely rude to our party. We were near the bocce courts and kids had been playing in them the entire time we were there. The kids in our group had spent very little time in the courts and the employee starts to blame our group for all the disarray on the courts. Knowing that yes our kids were over in that area we start to help straighten up the courts more to be helpful rather than out of responsibilities and she just kept going on about how the kids needed to be supervised. We never left our kids unattended which is why we are aware that they were not the ones responsible for the mess. She was way out of line and no one in our party will be back. Too bad for them we were one of the few groups of people that were there today and we really like to buy wine for our group to enjoy. I guess they are doing so well that they don't need our money So we will go some place else for our annual...