Brys Estate Vineyard & Winery — Attraction in Peninsula Township

Our wine tour guide added the Brys winery to our trip at the last minute because we left the previous place so quickly. We were all very excited about this, and eager to visit another location. Unfortunately, this joy was completely deflated as soon as we opened the front door.

We arrived at 4:25 PM with plenty of time before they closed at 5 PM. Our tour group of 9 people were met at the door by a rude woman who was clearly not excited to see us at all. She told us only 6 people could enter at a time, and the rest of the group had to wait outside in the cold before entering. This greeting (if you can call it that) set an uneasy vibe for us right away. Especially since we weren't really a large group, it wasn't busy, and they had 5 employees just standing there staring at us who could help. We then had to scramble to do counts and figure out which handful of us should wait outside in the cold before entering. Weird.

Once we finally made it to the counter, we were told we couldn't order flights or try samples because this option was done by "reservation only" so we ordered our strictly allocated 1 glass of wine. This makes it hard to know which wines you'd like here or what bottle to buy. I guess maybe enjoying or buying their wine isn't a high priority for this particular winery.

Once we had our wine we were directed to immediately go outside to the patio with clearly enough indoor seating available. This made it apparent we were definitely not wanted there and getting us peasants to be outside was their main goal. The whole process seemed rushed and unwelcoming. Like we were stuck on an assembly line conveyor belt to the outside.

Because the experience itself was so demeaning, I honestly couldn't even tell you if the wine was good or not. The patio is lovely though, so that deserves my 1...

Last week, three friends and I visited Brys Estate Vineyard & Winery on a vacation to the Traverse City area. The estate was beautiful, the wine delicious, and our server was fantastic (we didn't catch his name because he had a raincheck over his name tag and it was hectic as we were being seated). However the front of house - host and person who seated us - is why we are not able to leave a higher review. When our Uber driver dropped us off, the hosts said, "did you take an uber?...If so, you better catch them and tell them to wait on you." This was said as our Uber driver was driving off. We had no idea that ubers were difficult to get at the vineyard. That would be very useful to put on the website. We panicked and fumbled around trying to figure out how we were going to get back to Traverse City. This was as we were waiting for our 2:00 reservation table. We were seated about ten minutes late due to the rain - which was completely fine. Once seated, we were still trying to figure out how to get back. We told our server and he said, "Oh, we have a sheet listing all the taxi companies you can call/use." He was so helpful. This would have been nice for the host to provide. Then at 3:05 (almost an hour after we were seated), we were waiting on our check to be brought and the same host came over and told us we needed to wait out front because the next party was there. It was not handled graciously or in a way that felt anything other than rude. We explained we were waiting on our server to bring the check. Keep in mind we had just been seated not even and hour at this point. It also appeared others who were there before us were not being asked to leave. If tables need to turn that quickly, that should also be communicated with the...

We did not enjoy our experience at Brys. Upon arriving a few minutes early for our reservation, they told us our table wasn’t ready and invited us to take a drive down to their lavender fields. We figured, great, we wanted to see them anyways. To our dismay, the fields were already harvested! I’m not a farmer, so maybe it had to be that way. Can't blame anyone for timely harvesting. We were totally cool with that.

The hostesses and customer service however, was critically lacking.

When we showed up again to get seated, they refused to seat 2 of the people in our party because they were late additions. They could not be accommodated. While we understand the idea that reservations need to be accurate during covid-times, they seated two people that were in line in front of us who had no reservations. We saw, heard, and witnessed the whole thing. However, maybe they got the last two seats, so again, we gave them the benefit of the doubt and continued on our customer journey, sans 2 people. It was not an easy send-off.

As the hostess led us to our table and set down our menus, she obnoxiously lets us know that we only have 90 minutes. The way she said it was neither subtle nor welcoming. But fine, 90 minutes, plenty of time. When we tried to order a final round, they then told us our time was up and we could not place anymore orders. Math is math though, and we had 20 minutes left. So on top of the draconian 90 minutes imposition, they didn’t even give us 90 minutes.

When we asked to speak to a manager to simply let them know how time works, they doubled down, and no manager was made available to speak to us. Weak sauce. A google review was the only way to communicate to management.

Suffice it to say, we will not be going...