Talon Wines at the Meadery — Restaurant in Palisade

I canceled my wine club membership today. A decision I did not take lightly as I was quite fond of the Talon Riesling! However, I placed an order for shipment and the wine was in transit for 10 days in 90° plus temperatures! When I received the wine and tasted it, I found it to have a foul taste. Something was definitely wrong! I contacted the winery left a message. Did not hear from anyone for several days when I was finally contacted by a male and female persons I explained that the wine had a foul taste, and I believed it to be due to 10 days in transit at high heat temperatures! since I have a long history of ordering wines from several wineries around the country, I am quite well aware of the damage to wine at high temperatures! All of the other wineries I ordered from will not ship wine at those temperatures for this very reason! The first thing that the male person told me was that wine can withstand temperatures of 100+ degrees. FACT 1: This is completely false! If that were the case, there would be no need for wine cellars or climate controlled spaces for storing wine! FACT 2: wine begins to cook at 70°… Also light body whites are far less tolerant to heat! my order consisted mostly of light body whites. The male person should take note of this knowledge I have shared… He might learn something!!! When you start Misleading the customer with bogus information right from the start of the conversation, as with this one, Customer service is not your priority!’ Then , they proceeded to question the 10 days transit upon looking it up on UPS app which I had already done. It showed that it was on the 10th day that I received the wine. However, the driver Had typed in a note in his handheld device saying that he tried to deliver it the day before, but I was not available. Also absolutely false…I was home all day, I never received an out for delivery update from UPS. Reason being it was not out for delivery. I always receive that notice when it is on the truck to be delivered not this time. They sided with UPS, not me the customer! which the one day difference”really has no relevance at all that would have been the 9th day In 90+ degree temperatures… and the wine would have already been cooked days before! they offered NO solution of a refund or a replacement. Instead, I was told I needed to try more bottles of the foul tasting cooked wine! And afterwards, I would need to contact them again! I chose not to taste anymore of the foul tasting wine, which means i’m out over $200 for the order!

I did, however, get a clear lesson in the lack of good customer service practices by this company. So I chose to read some other reviews! Oh my gosh, I was overwhelmed by the complaints about the customer service practices of this winery dating back as far as five years ago and most likely further back than that, Well nothing has changed!!! I chose not to read anymore of the numerous one star reviews pointing out the Rudeness of the staff.. and that they are very confrontational with the customers, which was my experience immediately the attitude changed when I told the male person I believed the wine had been compromised by the heat! Customer service should be the backbone of your business However, this is not the case! You should have reached out to me asking what you could do to make it right? You never asked me that question! Now I know why you were not interested in making it right… for that very reason I would recommend when you look up the reviews, you click the tab to list them from lowest to highest rating! So you don’t lose 200+ dollars doing business with this company! Like I did!!!!

My husband and I are in the logistics (shipping) business! We would never side with a shipper over our customers! Our business motto is the customer is always right! This has served us well for over 20 years. We have never lost a customer.!

In fact, we quit using UPS years ago due to this...

Visited a number of Palisade area wineries last week and this place was high on the list of favorites. Pretty quiet and relaxing midweek, with a large range of options from meads, meads with fruit, and herb laced wines, to fruit wines and good old grape wines.

We focused on the meads and fruit laced concoctions since we had a car full of fine grape wines from other establishments. Our server, Jennifer, really knew what she was talking about and was great company throughout our tasting.

We settled on medium sweet and lightly sweet mead, neither of which, thankfully, were overdone on the sweetness scale. The medium was a wonderful "show mead," the lightly sweet more restrained on body as well as sugar, crisp and almost clear as water, with great honey aroma and flavor. Apricot honey was rounder, upping the body and complexity a bit. Others we really enjoyed were the lavender and peach wines.

Definitely a stop we will seek out when we are back...

Our first time trying mead wine. We both enjoyed the chocolate cherry honey wine. It's very sweet, so you only needed one glass maybe 2. We bought a bottle of wine we liked, a jar of chocolate honey spread, and cinnamon honey spread. Everything was really delicious! They had everything from lotions, lip balm, salsa, jams, t-shirts, wine, and so much more. It was hard not to want to buy everything. The staff was extremely friendly and very helpful. They let us try a few wines before deciding on a bottle. This was a great stop for us and will definitely be back when we...