My Experience at Imagery Winery

I've said I would share my bad experiences as well as the good ones. Well
folks, here's a negative one.

I went to this winery first in the summer of 2006 and had a great
experience. This was pretty special as it was the very first winery I went
to for wine tasting. Because it was my first winery experience, Imagery was
a special place to me. There are various uncommon varietals that I was
introduced to here, such as Viognier (which is now my favorite white wine.)
Besides the delicious wines, I loved how each bottle had very cool art work
from artists around the world.

My very last visit was in December of 2010. I brought a family friend here
to check out the art work and and the great wines. Started off ok and we
thought our tasting room lady was nice - just busy multitasking with
multiple people who were also tasting. But then we overheard a man in the
group she was helping as she looked over at us and he said "you can put
koolaid in the wine they wouldn't know the difference." The whole group
laughed along with the server. Of course, at this point I'm hoping this is
not really happening or maybe that I might be misinterpreting what just
occurred. But I couldn't hide the fact that the jerks comment was towards me
and my friend. The server did not defend us or realize how wrong that
statement was and pretty much condoned this kind of behavior. It took a few
seconds to take in this whole surreal event. I was very angry and enraged
but did not want to show how badly I was bothered by it. I felt like we
where in an environment that we were being told we didn't belong in and was
established only for people who were white.

My friend and I looked at each other, poured our wine into the dump bucket,
put our glasses down, put $20 tasting fee down on the counter, and left
before we exploded. FYI I hate koolaid, water melon, grape soda, but I do
love wine and fried chicken.

Though I had my first wine tasting experience her almost 7 years ago I can
never go back here. I can't be angry at this winery for how customers and
patrons may treat me. But I'm definitely disturbed on how the staff handles
racist customers, even if they do plan on buying a case or 2 of wine.

Due to my experience here I cannot recommend this place because of the level
of customer service. This is sad to me, because the wines produced here are
actually unique and well-made.