Shambolic

Went, this afternoon, to Vinopolis with a group of people as a birthday weekend outing. I'd booked us into the Premium Wine Tour (extra premium tastings, a 'how to taste wine' session), and while the afternoon ended up being fun because of the people, I was less than impressed with the place.

To start with, my advance, pre-paid booking was apparently not on their list, and they 'couldn't get into the system'. The hen party group in front of us also had trouble because the Vinopolis employee didn't believe the number of people they'd booked and paid for, despite them having brought their confirmation email along with them.

Then, though I was standing in plain site of their desk, no one bothered coming to tell me that actually they had found my booking, so when I went back to be told 'yeah, your tickets are here', we'd missed the 'how to' session at 2pm. "The next one is at 2.30" I was told, so we waited a while to go in and start, thinking it would be the best thing to do it at the start of the tour.

Having waited and then entered, it turned out that the next session was at 3pm, meaning we wandered the first third of the place with neither 'how to', nor any wine to sample (missing the point surely). By the time we'd gone back through the tour at 2.55, there was already a sizable queue for the 3pm and we barely all got in.

And once on the tour, everyone remarked that there's almost nothing of the 'museum' itself that's really engaging - just a lot of boards with wine/region information and some photos. There's one point where you can smell and touch some of the fruits and spices that are associated with wine tastes and smell, and that's about it except for some tastings of what in fact turned out to be in some cases very, *very* uninspiring wines.

Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun, but that all came down to the people, definitely not the place, its people, or its organisation, all of which were decidedly unimpressive.

Posted on September 10, 2005 06:46 PM

What do you think? (Comments must be approved before they will appear.)