ZD Wines — Attraction in St. Helena

Humiliated and offended by the rude manager who doesn't care about customers' feelings. We had a great day in napa visiting two other wineries (Ehler and Silver Oak) who offered excellent service and amazing wine. We arrived at ZD at 3pm and ordered tasting and food pairings. We've been up since early morning and the heat in Napa was pretty strong, so one of our friends wanted to take a little nap on the table. When she fell asleep the waiter came and asked if she's ok, and we explained she was just tired and needed 10 mins to nap. Then the manager came and poured the 4th round of wine to everyone aside from our friend and said: "this will be the last round of wine we'll serve" and brought the bills. At that time our friend had woken up and was totally fine. When we compared the menu, we realized there's still one round of wine missing. When we asked, the manager simply said: there's safety concerns, so I told you this is the last round of serving" without expressing any concern or aplogies to my friend who felt humiliated in public from his words. When I pushed harder, he offered to refund half of the tasting fee. If we did't ask and find out there was one round missing, the manager would have accepted full payment without any explanation.

I've tried to communicate with the manager on the site as to how his actions and words have hurt our feeling and that we understood there's safety concern, but he should have been consistent and clear on enforcing it throughout the tasting experience. If a person falling asleep on the table is a serious warning sign, then at that point he should have stopped pouring wine to everyone on the table, explain the concern, and offer the refund. Instead he poured most of the wine without letting us know we wouldn't be going through the whole menu and tried to charge the full price. I understand where he came from, but he could have delt with it in a much better way without leaving his customers feel offended and humiliated after a great...

We have visited countless wineries in this region. While the ZD tasting property is on extraordinary grounds, these folks have lost site of what made them and that is people who love great wine. Out of all our visits for this particular weekend, we were most disappointed here. It feels like this winery is focused on the benefit of lucrative tasting meaning high dollar tasting fees. In fact, you will pay a whopping $40 for a 2 wrist taste of a flight that is somewhat sub par AND YOU DO NOT PASS GO ( THE GROUND FLOOR) until your money is collected. The patio is nice and affords a 2nd floor property view but look down, and you have an ordinary commercial parking lot. All in all....save your money for the humble wineries who offer a complex blend while keeping things real. Gallo potential here if they do not take a step back and re- engineer genuine. On a lighter note the gentleman who conducted the tasting on floor 2 was a delight but more abou the blend than sharing...

We visited ZD wines as part of our tour of Napa Valley, and without doubt it was our most memorable experience - from the moment we arrived Stefania and the team hosted us exceptionally.

This winery stands out as it allowed us to see the whole journey of grape to finished wine, and there was a real family feel, being able to see and hear the journey of the vineyard from its founding to now.

Stefania and the team were superb at guiding us through the various wines, helping us really understand what made them what they were. The wines themselves were fantastic, with each of our group having our own favourites, which in itself was testament to the quality and variety ZD wines have to offer.

There are over 500 wineries in Napa Valley to visit, but a return visit to here is definitely on the cards when we next...