Upper Shirley Vineyards

Nice facility and friendly staff but ...as long as you like showing up to a winery in your Sunday best you"ll enjoy. Not overly impressed with the wine selection but it wasn't bad. Just not my kind of place, less casual than most, disappointed

I want to preface this review by saying that I have worked at three Virginia wineries behind the bar and my husband has worked at two. My husband and I also like to visit other Virginia wineries with our toddler when possible. My husband, mom, 20 month-old toddler and I arrived at Upper Shirley Vineyards and noted before we went in that no pets were allowed but children were permitted in the tasting room. This is something that we are very much aware of as not all wineries allow children in the tasting room. First, a little about this taster. I did not catch the name, but he was pretty distinctive in appearance. He was tall, with blonde hair and a blonde handlebar hipster mustache. He wore a black polo shirt with a weird logo on it: a skull with bunny ears. I assume this is not a winery logo? The bar was medium busy, at least by my husband and my standards. Our taster was waiting on another couple. Our taster gave us our first wine but then busied himself with the other older couple, pouring them several more wines. After 15 + minutes. My husband, who is used to giving tastings to 10+ people at a time was getting annoyed and said to the taster, “Hey can we get our second wine?” The taster replied over his shoulder without even looking at us, “Yeah, in a minute.” My husband wanted to leave but I convinced him to stick it out. It’s not like the taster was giving lots of profound information anyway – just reading from the sheet. So we waited…. Another couple who was standing next to us finally went to the other end of the bar because the taster wouldn’t even acknowledge they were standing there. By the 15-20 minute mark, our toddler was getting fussy. We were trying to pace back and forth from the bar trying to get her comfortable, but after all that wait, you too would get tired being held by your parents or playing below the bar. Frankly, with our daughter getting fussy I was hoping the taster would speed things up. But nope, still he stayed focused on this one couple. Finally, the taster finished with the other couple, but apparently there was an issue with the taster getting a tip and running payment on the POS system. The taster called a manager over to help so at least from this I know a manager was available to help the taster with at least taking payment and getting his tips. At this point we were 30 minutes into the tasting at least and we were only on wine #4! My husband and I were going back and forth over whether we should just leave, shifting the toddler around, etc. When out of the blue, the taster says to us, without making eye contact, “You’re gonna have to take your kid out of here!” He says this as he’s pointing at the door. We were shocked. No manager was called over. No suggestion of handing off the baby to another family member. Nothing. Just unceremoniously thrown out of the tasting room. I was so angry that I said to him we were fine with that because he was probably the worst taster we had ever encountered. To this he responded that “it wasn’t fair to the rest of the people at the bar that our child was crying and disturbing them.” Again, no eye contact and then he proceeded to turn his back to us. In fact, there were at least two other babies in the room, one of which had been crying throughout the 30+ minutes we were at the bar. Maybe that's just how customers are treated at Upper Shirley Vineyards? I don't know if we didn’t look rich enough to give this guy a big enough tip or maybe this taster just really hates children. But I will tell you something that is certain: my husband and I are going to tell anyone and everyone who will listen to never go to Upper Shirley Vineyards.