Le Vignoble — Restaurant in Bristol

Edited in order to respond to the reply from the bar as I don’t appreciate being called a liar:

Your statement “the rest of your group had a great time…” is simply untrue. If we had a great time we would have stayed for longer. Some of the group went to a neighbouring bar after only 45 minutes whilst the rest left after approximately one hour. We had a nice time in each others’ company despite the wine bar.

The man behind the bar who I believe was the manager said exactly what I stated in my review, verbatim, which was the sole reason I was so incensed into writing the review originally. The rest of the staff were perfectly pleasant and helpful, I said nothing to the contrary about them. This could have all been avoided had the guy behind the bar simply offered my wife a refund, as you would expect. You are correct when you say that we were offered lemonade to make the wine taste better but it did little to mask the taste of the bad wine and was not the appropriate response.

We decided not to take the pre paid wine card as a solution because we didn’t want to put more money on the card than we’d likely spend. It is not a convenient alternative.

Original review here: Ridiculous Policy and awful customer service. Booked a table for a family birthday but didn’t know we needed to put driver’s license behind the bar in exchange for a card that you need to be able to purchase the wine from their dispenser systems. That meant we could only order ‘house wine’ from behind the bar. We did so and it was truly awful, we tried to return the wine as it was so bad, not something I’d normally do and the moustachio barman said, “Well we can’t put it back in the bottle”. When we protested he said, “Well people don’t normally order the house wine”. I could not believe it. How can a specialist wine bar knowingly stock bad house wine when they make it so awkward to acquire their wine purchasing system. Who carries their driving license around with them these days? Me, my family and friends will not...

I was extremely disappointed in the way we were served last night. It's such a shame because the place is absolutely stunning. What started off as a good night, ended in such a bad impression.

We were told by one of the ladies working there that they were receiving complaints about how rude the people I was with were in the bathroom and asked us to leave. We are customers too, so what puts their complaints over our entertainment? Or their words over ours, because we had no idea what they were talking about.

Secondly, as you may appreciate, at the end of the night one would not be as sober as he/she would be first walking in. We were mistaken in thinking that we could smoke our vape inside, and were told to stop two times. We said we would end the night and proceeded to leave. Again, I appreciate we should only be told once, however this still does not give the waiters the right to be rude about it; nor does it give the waiters the right to invade our privacy by taking a picture of the person who was smoking with her personal mobile phone as we were paying to leave. When asked why she did that, she said its for CCTV purposes, despite the fact there was already a CCTV in operation. She then proceeded to say that "if you break the law by smoking inside, then I can break the law and take pictures of you".

Lastly, when wanting to inquire about the bill, the waitress was so impatient. Part of the bill was paid, but some of it was not, which was confusing - understandably. She said that she would not be repeating herself again.

I will leave this for you to judge if treating customers this way is acceptable. Again, this is such a shame because the place...

We loved it the first time we came here, so our second visit we brought our family (4 of us) for a joint birthday celebration. We left feeling disappointed by the experience. Half the wine bottles were empty or dregs, so even though it said there would be 25ml left it would sputter out in some of them and not provide the amount. When asking about getting the bottles changed they seemed a bit defensive and said unless empty they wouldn’t get changed. I asked at one point if they had a specific empty bottle they could change, the guy said let me check and then he just never got back to me. Just seemed rude and dismissive. We then realised until the entire glass cabinet was empty then they weren’t bothering. When half the wines you sell are empty, kind of ruins your USP and the experience. We ordered food too which was really nice, but the place was pretty dead (2-3 other couples max the entire time we were there) and our waitress forgot to give us one of the food items we’d ordered, and then later we had to chase her for water we’d ordered as she forgot that too. All in all it was just a pretty disappointing experience, especially when compared to how great our first visit was. Considering how easy it is to spend 200+ here, having half your wine selection being empty is kind of crazy. Definitely won’t be coming here for that kind of experience again, just a casual glass of...