Apple Barn Winery — Attraction in Sevierville

Oh dear. Long story short: do NOT go here. Very odd. So we walked in, the dude at the tasting bar almost visibly sighed and rolled his eyes as we walked up. Immediately asked for our ID’s, and then proceeds to scan them. (WHAT?!) Then he rattles off a phrase rather abruptly. YOU GET FOUR FOR FREE OR $5 FOR ALL OF THEM. I wasn’t sure what was going on. Like you’re giving a tasting for free or? I asked him to repeat it. He meant samples. Oh, ok. So we looked at the menu, I asked to sample the first one on the list (they only have one dry btw). He poured it, I tasted it. Just ok. But rather then even bother with the rest of my very awkward free sample situation, I ordered a glass of the first one, and went to peruse the gift shop while my other girlfriends got their samples and decided. So then we were all meandering around the gift shop (they have really cute stuff) and every time I looked up, the people behind the bar were staring a hole through us!! The lady back there actually had her mouth open, staring like we were aliens. And the awkward dude with the samples. I stared back for a minute, they didn’t even care. Yikes. I wanted to grab a bunch of their doggie merch for me and some of my friends and fam, but we opted to just leave. Did not purchase any wine.

We came here because the reviews appeared to be good. After further inspection, the ONLY reason this place has a 4.6 is that people are mistaking it for the grill, or the reviews are from years ago. (The grill is fantastic btw) There are several places on the property. The winery just happens to have the luxury of being lumped in with them. Holy twilight zone experience. Shame that we chose this as the last stop of a great girls weekend. They’re missing a huge opportunity with the setting...

We came back to Apple Barn Winery since we were in the area trying the restaurant and cider house.

They allow you to try 4 wines for free, so here is what I tried:

*Apple Strawberry - just okay, only a hint of strawberry *Apple Barn White - just okay. *Muscadine - this was my favorite before as it has a good muscadine flavor, and it is still a good one. *Apple Pomegranate - My husband tasted this one, and said it was really good. I was going to go in for a sip of his, mind you, the free tastings are tiny, so it's not like I was going to get a lot. I immediately got yelled at for no sharing - ironically other stops on the Rocky Top trail allow sharing. So, I ended up trying this one on my own, and it was my new favorite there.

My husband also tried apple peach, apple blueberry and racoon red (blackberry, pomegranate, and watermelon), all three of which were okay to him, just did not have a whole lot of flavor.

Overall, the wines here are just okay, there are definitely better wineries in the area. Service is definitely my main complaint. Here and at the cider house, they were just not good. Between the I could care less to be here and let me get you through this tasting and yelling at me attitude, we left without purchasing anything as it left a poor taste in my mouth. Service would have changed everything for me to support with a purchase of a bottle.

Go if you please, but it's not a place I...

We went in the winery on Saturday night (part of the wine trail) at 7:45 pm not knowing they closed at 8 pm. We stood at the counter for 8 minutes waiting for someone to greet us or to just acknowledge that we were there. There were 4 workers and they were having there own conversations and finally someone spoke up and said we quit the tastings at 10 till so we can get out of here. We were fine with that but disappointed that no one had spoke up to say anything. When we walked in the place had a terrible smell but we said we would come back on Sunday. We did go back on Sunday and it still smelled bad and the 4 people were just as rude as the night before. We were never greeted again and they took several other people in front of us. We watched as the other girl was doing several other things besides the tasting and no one was really explaining the wines. Finally we were able to do our tasting and we only liked one of the wines they offered. We left and went to the cider tasting which everything is carbonated. The girl was getting ready to get off work and rushed us through without explaining much at all. Both of these places need to be taken off the wine trail as every other winery was super nice and friendly. We talked to several people that work in various places and they all said that the staff at the Apple Barn are very rude and the managers do not care. We will not be...