Wow. This goes to show you that you have to read and evaluate all reviews and not just go by the star rating.
Most of these reviews talk about how cute the tasting room is, or that the people were nice to them, or that they attended an event and had fun, or that they wanted to say they had been to a town with a population of 18, or that they "grabbed some bottles of wine and headed up to Hearst Castle" ( and what does that even mean? You can't just hang out at Hearst Castle drinking wine.)
The wine here is shockingly bad, and while I don't mean the worst wine ever, I mean relative to most of the wine at other wineries in the area. We come up here 3 times a year and stop at 4-6 wineries each time. This trip, the wines were especially good everywhere but at Harmony. The Harmony reds were weak / thin / watery, austere, no fruit, overly dry finish (and I like a dry finish) and the whites were just ok and over-priced for what they are and also relative to other wineries.
So that was my take, and my husband agreed. I really don't care if people are nice to me, or if the building is nice, etc, because I go to a winery to learn what I can about the region, the vineyards, the grapes and the wine, and to taste the wine relative to what I have learned, and if I like the wine, to bring some home to accompany a special dinner on a Saturday night.
My husband prefers to only spend money where the people are, if not respectful of the customer, at least not disrespectful. Well, the guy behind the bar told my husband in a snotty tone that the tasting was $7 "up front." Like yeah, my CFO husband is going to run away after the tasting. Sorry he wasn't wearing his wingtips and Brooks Brothers suit to the wine tasting.
So I took a small sip of each of his tastings (I didn't do my own because I am the
driver) and each time I was surprised at how bad the wine was, since they had been almost universally great the past few days at the other wineries (which implies good weather, good
grapes, available to all) and afterward he told me how rude they guy had been. The other wineries we had been to this trip all comped his tasting (which was kind of unusual) some even before he had said that he wanted to buy anything. This was the first winery in a long time where we didn't find one thing to buy. Except of course the tasting. "Up front." read more