点评:We have always enjoyed tasting at Sarver Winery. Even though we live in Seattle and they don’t ship to Washington state, we joined their wine club and would make a special trip or go out of our way to stop when traveling to other Oregon cities.
On this last visit we were on our way back from Ashland, OR. We hadn’t gotten an email saying the new wines had been released and it was time to pick up our club order, but we figured if we’d missed the release period we could still pick up our wines and do some tasting.
The temperatures in Oregon had been in the 90’s all week with severe smoke and air quality issues. We had just spent 3 hours in the car. It was great to step into the air conditioning and we were looking forward to tasting. The person who interacted with us said, you’re not members, are you? We said actually we were, and hadn’t gotten an email about the summer release. He very defensively said that there were problems with their email system and the date was on the website (which it had not been when we checked a week ago). Then he told us that if we wanted to do tasting we would have to go to the booth outside; you could only be served in the tasting room if you were drinking full glasses or a bottle.
The table outside had white wines on ice but they were barely cool and the reds were warm. There were a few tasting notes on the new releases, but the full lists of wines for sale were only indoors. We found a table and chairs we could drag into the shade and spent a miserable hour in the 90 degree heat and smoky air tasting wines - no convivial chatting with the tasting staff or backstories on the new wines, aspects we had enjoyed so much in the past.
I think people who commit to buying several bottles of wine several times a year should be treated as valued customers. Since we weren’t treated that way during our last visit to Sarver we decided not to renew our wine club membership.
翻译:我们一直很喜欢在萨弗酒庄品酒。虽然我们住在西雅图,而他们并不向华盛顿州送货,但我们还是加入了他们的葡萄酒俱乐部。每次前往俄勒冈州的其他城市旅行时,我们都会特意绕道去那里。
最近一次,我们正从俄勒冈州的阿什兰返程。当时我们还没有收到邮件通知说新酒已经上市,也还没到领取会员订单的时间。不过我们想,就算错过了发布期,我们仍然可以去取酒并进行品鉴。
整个星期,俄勒冈州的气温都维持在90多华氏度,还伴有严重的烟雾和空气质量问题。我们刚刚在车里坐了3个小时。能走进有空调的场所真是太惬意了,我们也满怀期待地准备开始品酒。接待我们的工作人员问:“你们不是会员吧?”我们回答说其实我们是会员,只是没收到关于夏季新酒发布的邮件。他极力辩解称,他们的邮件系统出了问题,而且网站上也写了品鉴日期(不过我们一周前查看时网站上并没有这个信息)。接着他告诉我们,如果想进行品鉴,就必须去外面的展台;只有在品鉴室里喝完整杯酒或整瓶酒的人才能获准继续品鉴。
外面的桌子上放着冰镇过的白葡萄酒,但实际上几乎没怎么凉,红葡萄酒则还是温的。桌上还有几份关于新release酒款的品鉴笔记。不过,完整的待售葡萄酒清单只在室内才有。我们找来一张桌子和几把椅子,把它们拖到阴凉处,然后在90度高温且充满烟雾的环境中痛苦地花了一个小时来品酒——既没有与品酒顾问愉快地闲聊,也听不到关于新酒的背景故事,而这些正是我们过去非常喜欢的环节。
我认为,那些每年都会多次购买多瓶葡萄酒的顾客理应被视为尊贵客户。由于上次访问萨弗尔时我们并未受到那样的待遇,因此我们决定不再续订葡萄酒俱乐部的会员资格。