Megalomaniac Wines — Restaurant in Lincoln

Megalomaniac Winery was our wedding venue in June 2019. I can truly say choosing Megalomaniac was my biggest regret with the wedding. Every time I think of our wedding, I'm overwhelmed with anger and anxiety over how things unfolded throughout the months of working with Megalomaniac up to the wedding date, and even post-wedding. To summarize, the experience was so terrible it led us to consult with our lawyers, frantically search for other venues 2 weeks before the wedding, and dispute erroneous post-event credit card charges that we were unable to recover. Unfortunately, due to the tight timeframe we were left with no choice but to stay with this venue for our wedding.

Let's start at the beginning, Megalomaniac's Event Manager Jake is a charming salesperson that is all too eager to pour you a glass of sparkling wine and spew promises that he has no authority to and cannot deliver on. When he dropped the ball the first time, he was nowhere to be found, did not take responsibly and did not speak up or advocate for us despite being our point of contact all the way up to this point. Just weeks before the wedding, Megalomaniac decided to do major construction on the exterior patio of the venue and they didn’t bother to tell us. We only found out because our caterer ended up being on site and saw the last minute construction. This was the outdoor area where we had planned to host both the ceremony and reception dinner for our summer wedding. This caused to scramble at the last minute and incur extra decorating costs due to the new structure they put up, which completely changed the look of our wedding which was planned to be an open terrace wedding. We ended up negotiating with their CFO Ryan to rectify our concerns but it was quickly apparent how out of touch he was with weddings, being so defensive and completely unempathetic to our situation. Despite disappointing us time and time again, it's clear Megalomanaic executives do not value customer service and did not do anything to make us happy. In fact, just 2 days before our wedding, they pulled out of our agreement to use John Howard's (the owner) estate for our wedding pictures despite being promised this for the entire 10 months we were working with them. Ridiculous, unprofessional and spiteful behaviour! Megalomaniac has no business being in the wedding industry.

If you do choose Megalomaniac for a wedding venue for whatever reason—I can't imagine you will after reading this review—make sure you get all details discussed and agreed upon written into the contract. And ensure that everything you agree upon in every subsequent meeting written down as proof because you'll need it for later when you file a claim with your credit card for erroneous charges. For example, they didn’t get our guest count correct and have failed to update the charges on our credit card, which we also didn’t authorize. They just used the old credit card number they had on file for an earlier payment we made. It is so silly that there's zero trust and goodwill with Megalomaniac and that agreements made during in-person meetings (with witnesses) wouldn't be honoured. Honest advice to brides and grooms; you'll be stressed enough during wedding planning, avoid this major headache and choose another venue that's more experienced with weddings since this will be one of the biggest days and moments of your life and you don't want...

One of twelve that visited this winery this past weekend. I am the one who organized our wine tour, and after an amazing time at Malivour we were really excited pulling into this venue. This was my third visit. However we will NOT be returning. First, I was told when booking our tasting “the cost is $25 but essentially FREE if you buy a bottle of wine”. One of the men on the tour asked if he could have another splash of the rose as that was the one he was considering purchasing. He was told very rudely “no” as the tour guide rolled her eyes. And continued to go over their “policy”. This was not our first time visiting a winery, and as I had mentioned not our first time at this location and we are familiar with how a tasting goes. We are also familiar with public relations and customer service as almost all of the guests have experience in this field. Let alone a reason to be rude and embarrass a guest. If we are paying $25 l don’t see how one guest could not have another taste before he is expected to spend $40+ on a bottle of wine. Next, another guest (the birthday girl) who was paying and was the reason for celebrating the day with wine a wine tour, had the tour guide chase her out of the room and embarrass her to the point of tears. She had paid debit, and machine read “approved”, the transaction wasn’t approved and needed to be ran through again. However the tour guide yelled at her to come back, and made it seem as if she was trying to get past without paying. This was the final straw and had all of our guests extremely upset. This is extremely disappointing as we had two guests from Australia and we were very eager to visit your winery and enjoy the venue and views. The customer service we received yesterday was the worst I have ever experienced. And I sent an email almost immediately and still have not have had a reply! One guest of the twelve was competed, and this made matters worse because the other eleven were not taken care of at all!!!!! This winery ruined our day, had guests in tears and left myself extremely embarrassed as I am the one who planned the day!

Sincerely, A wine lover, but not a megalomaniac fan

Your short response goes to show your guests and costumers are not your number one concern, an apology is not sufficient as I am still waiting for response...

We come to the Niagara region frequently, and we bring a lot of our out of town guests to our favourite wineries when we do. When we saw the Megalomaniac winery, we couldn’t wait to check it out. My sister had received a Megalomaniac wine as a gift a little while back, but she couldn’t remember the name and we were excited to try to find it at the winery. I can’t even express the disappointment at the customer service and the way we were treated at this winery. It was absolutely awful.

First, it took forever to get someone to help us…no one was even paying attention that there were potential paying customers, waiting to be helped, and it wasn’t even that busy. Then we asked the lady sitting in front of the patio area if we could do a tasting and she said we needed to speak to the gentleman by the door. He was helpful and said there was a tasting but it would be $30 a person, which seemed really high if 4 of us wanted to participate. Instead, we decided to pay for a glass of wine matching the taste that we were looking for. There were 3 or 4 tables open on the patio so we asked if we could sit outside and order a wine and we were told they were all booked up. Then, I said, well, you have seats indoors here, can’t I sit here, and have a glass of wine, and the lady said, “sorry, we don’t serve here.” This is absolutely ridiculous. I’ve never heard of anyone turning down a potential sale! Here you have a customer who is not only asking to pay for a glass of wine, but who has guaranteed to purchase hundreds of dollars worth of wine, and you can’t be bothered to serve me and my family? When we FINALLY found someone that would talk to us at the bar, we were told a server will be with us shortly, and no one showed up. It’s one thing if the place was super busy, but there were tons of staff milling around the bar, not helping anybody. We finally got fed up and left and went next door to Tawse winery, where the staff was amazing, and super helpful. We ended up purchasing a lot of bottles from that winery instead. It’s too bad we didn’t get the same type of treatment at Megalomaniac, especially when we were so looking forward to it. I'll never go there again, and I won't take any of my friends...