You’re right, we messed up when we charged you a tasting fee. Our policy is to not charge folks in the industry their tasting fee. Our friends and partners in the media and blogosphere included. That said, we do charge our customers a tasting fee because they represent 15% of our gross income at the winery. Put another way, since our opening Memorial Day Weekend, not charging would have meant forgoing over $75,000 in income. This matters because contrary to popular opinion, this industry generally has very narrow profit margins and the start-up costs are enormous. Sharon and I have borrowed most of what it took to open BOW and have not yet taken a penny out of the business. When we were getting ready to open we looked around and saw that virtually every winery in the area charged tasting fees. That is the standard in this area and so we followed it. Not following this standard would be the difference between making payroll and perhaps running out of capital in spite of our very succesful inaugural season. Hope this helps explain why we do what we do. Maybe you can come out to try us. Our customers have been very supportive of our efforts to get it right and our wine and winery have gotten rave reviews.

http://barreloak.com/bowbuzz.htm

Regards-

Brian.

Claire-I actually have only had VA Petite Verdot. We try to go to vineyards wherever we are as well, had a lot of NC wines at a festival in Duck a few years back!

We were in Charlotte's airport last December & they have a wine bar that pours NC wines. Not bad at all!