Tour Buses and Group Visits

Gauthier Vineyard’s winding gravel roads and limited parking are unsuitable for buses and vans carrying over 10 passengers. We are unable to safely accommodate these vehicles. The drivers will be denied access. For groups arriving in personal vehicles, we require reservations for groups of 10 or larger. We will attempt to accommodate these groups in separate locations based upon availability at the time of reservation.

COVID Update

At this time in the arc of the pandemic’s trajectory, we want to thank all of our guests for their patience and for their voluntary compliance with extraordinary constraints placed upon their normal behavior. Due to your loyal patronage, we never closed. We never reduced staff. We took no taxpayer money from the Government. And, as always, we are remain very grateful for your business.

We are beginning a transition to our pre-COVID operations. Masks are not required. The queuing and spacing are no longer required. Social distancing is a patron prerogative. The law is clear that your vaccination status is your business. We trust in the common sense of our patrons, and are confident they will conduct themselves appropriately with respect for one another.

Over the next few weeks, we intend to return to our traditional tastings with some variations based upon lessons we have learned during restricted operations. Our traditional approach to tastings occasionally resulted in wait times exceeding the patience of some of our patrons. The math is simple. The duration of a comprehensive wine tasting is driven by the number of patrons, the number of wines offered and a tasting room’s physical lay-out. We are considering offering tastings on the hour with a sign-up sheet for those interested. We welcome your feedback and recommendations.

We have learned most of our guests arrive with well-defined preferences in the four corners of wines: red, white, sweet or dry. More importantly, many of our patrons tell us they prefer to tailor their wine tasting experience around personal preference, in other words, they prefer a larger sampling of fewer wines. In our industry, this has produced an increasingly popular tasting experience called “Flights”. We first observed this offering at the breweries, and it is now becoming commonplace at wineries. We will begin offering tasting “Flights” of four wines, two ounces each, on Friday June 11, 2021. We look forward to your feedback and will adjust our approach to “Flights” accordingly.

Lastly, we have learned that denying service to customers who have been over-served upon arrival begets retribution in the form of negative ratings. We have a legal and moral obligation to deny service when a guest has consumed too much. It is a judgement call we take very seriously and without apology.