My wife and I are wine club members at Raul Ramirez. For years. The wine is 5 stars. I need to start this review saying that the wine is amazing. They are legitimately a top two or three winery in Temecula and it is without question.
This review is about the service, the tasting room, and the overall treatment we received on our most recent visit and honestly the overall treatment we have experienced there recently.
Again, I have to say that we are members. For this tasting we had a reservation. We walked in for our reservation and to pick up our wine and to be honest, I'm not sure we have ever been treated worse, ANYWHERE. The woman who checked us in and served us was curt, abrupt, disinterested, rude, and from the get-go greeted us as though we were our own 21 year old daughter on a bachelorette party girl bus from Wilson Creek. When she poured our first glasses for the tasting, she honest-to-goodness poured the wine, walked away, and never told us a single thing. No intro to the wine, not even the varietal. Nothing about what we were drinking, tasting notes, NOTHING. When we asked what we were drinking the response was, "You're doing a tasting. You start at the top of the list and go to the bottom...you can read it right? I figured members knew how a tasting work." This is her ACTUAL quote. We were not rude, we were personable, we walked in, said we were members here for a tasting reservation, we were seated and treated in this manner.
The reason we joined this wine club was obviously 1) the wine, and 2) we weren't treated like so many other places else in the valley. The experience in the tasting room was comfortable, homey, relaxing, personalized and personable. Small and quaint, but artful and with big beautiful wines. Unfortunately I guess it's become like so many other places...although to be honest the random dude at Wilson Creek shilling out $15 bubbly was kinder and told us more about his lemon pledge flavored bubbly than our mean girl at Raul...The Raul Ramirez experience has absolutely changed. As we expected, the wine was beautiful, but the tasting was so sour it was impossible to enjoy and I remember nothing of any of the bottles and I haven't looked at the 6 we took home to even know what we have. I don't know if we'll stay members. It was appalling. GBV and Palumbo have never treated us that way, even before we were members there as well. Over the last decade we watched our small and quaint little Europa membership grow into the monstrosity they now represent....and still no one has ever treated us this way.
Apologies this got so long, but someone needs to know. read more