Goose Watch Winery — Attraction in Town of Varick

I visited in late October 2017 for the Chestnut Festival. I expected the Chestnut Festival to be much larger and festive, but it wasn't. They had 2 long tables - one to sell wine and chestnuts, and the other was chestnut made dishes - a pumpkin chestnut cake/bread, and chestnut artichoke dip and a chestnut soup. All were pretty good, but because chestnuts have a very light mild flavor, I couldn't taste the chestnuts in any of the 3 dishes. They also had roasted chestnuts, which they microwaved and then roasted over a flying pan on a grill. The chestnuts weren't fully roasted, and they tasted raw. The lady roasting the chestnuts had never had chestnuts and didn't know what it was supposed to taste like. I purchased a bag of chestnut, and boiled it at home - out of laziness, and and they were very good.

Back to the winery, the property is huge with tables and large grassy area around a pond to picnic or relax over a bottle/glass of wine. Because of the festival or maybe it was always busy, I'm not sure, inside the winery was packed. The wine tasting counter was packed, and a long line at the register to purchase wine and merchandise.

While waiting in line, I noticed they have hard cider which was not advertised on their website, or I might have missed it. I picked up a few bottle of wines for gifts, and bottles of port wine, Two to Mango, and a case of graph juice. The Two to Mango is very sweet and it is delicious. The graph juice was good, but I like the grape juice at the Wagner Winery and Brewery much better. Wagner is about 17 miles South of Goose Watch.

I didn't have all the bottles and case of graph juice with me when I was in line. It was impossible for me to collect them all by myself with 2 little dogs. The lady at the register couldn't help me until I collected all the bottles. Fortunately, another lady working there helped me collected what I wanted, and I had to remind the cashier that I am ready to check out after she helped several more people while I stood waiting. It could just be because they were so busy and she was focused on clearing up the line at the register.

Overall, my experience was pretty good. I don't like crowds, and because it was so crowded, I left after I got my chestnuts and wine and graph juice. I am not sure if I will return to this winery. For those who enjoy a nice glass of wine and don't mind the crowds, it's a nice winery. The back fo the store has a long deck with seatings. It has a nice distance view of the Cayuga Lake. The winery is not on the lake, but it's close...

We were very excited for this winery, because the setting looked great, beautiful buildings, beautiful view. Holiday shopping spree 2017: I understand that you are busy and by the time we got there at 3:30, you would see many people, but it really was very poor service. We tried to engage the girl pouring for us, and she was as if she was a robot, just giving us the one-liners for each wine and saying nothing else. She seemed bored with her job and annoyed that we were there, and that might have been okay if the wines have been good, but the wines were awful. It was our 7th Winery of the day, and you could taste the quality on the goose watch wines were not as high as some of the other wineries we have been too. We did not enjoy our stop here, and will not be returning. I recommend you go once to check it out, but if you are pressed for time there are better...

The owner was very rude. We called weeks before hand to ask him if we can split a 9 party group to be coronavirus cautious and they said yes. Got there today and he was very rude having us wait 20 min after serving multiple people before us who were buying bottles. He said to us “in a rude way” that we have a large group that it’ll take a long time “to serve small glasses” before serving anyone so we will have to wait. Also said we can go to the brewery instead if we don’t want to wait. The other workers were very nice to us and think they should get a raise dealing with the rude owner. We would not recommend it this winery to anyone doing the...