Rainy Crick Wine

Good deals and happy service. Look for them on island daily deals and stock up to let it age and you'll be laughing. :)

I first went into the store about 2 years ago to get some advice on how to make my own blackberry wine. The staff were super friendly and shared a lot of information even though I was not an existing customer and making the wine at my own home. They even provided me with some free yeast and other chemicals that I was having trouble locating in Nanaimo. Today I brought in 40 lbs of blackberries to make port. The manager opened up a bottle of her own port for tasting. The wine was excellent and I am looking forward to my own 2 batches in 2 months time.

When I first started using their services three years ago, RCW paid attention to retaining customers by giving discounts on subsequent orders, and adding extras for little or no extra cost. That has changed. There are two international students running the operation who know little about wine and, unlike the previous student, do not offer any assistance. As a fairly regular customer, I was surprised at being charged $1 for a wine bottle (one accidentally broke during the bottling). Normally this bottle replacement would be free. When I presented the female employee with a 20.00 bill to pay for the breakage, she begrudgingly dug through a bag of change and charged me $1.10 (tax, apparently) in total. There’s nothing like being “nickeled and dimed” to reward customer loyalty. The present employees need to learn some of the finer nuances of customer service skills.

WORST experience ever, at first it was good, picked and cleaned and pitted my 90 LBS of plums, took them into Rainy Crick , they did all the work all I had to do was bottle it. Went back and bottle the wine and took it home, a few days later Rainy Crick phoned to say they forgot to put in the potassium sorbate, so store it in a cold place, so I took all 60 bottles of wine to my cold basement and left it there for 6 week, then the fun began. My husband went to the basement to get a bottle of wine because we had company and wanted to serve some of our wine, when he came up stairs his finger was bleeding because he said there was a broken bottle in the case and did not see it, when I did open the bottle of wine it exploded all over my kitchen, we were covered in wine and so was my kitchen, I email the winery right away and they phoned me back within minutes, and told me to bring the wine back in and they would fix it, well I brought the wine in, they wanted me to open all the unbroken bottles and pour it into a carboy, I was on my lunch break and said for them to do it , it was their mistake not mine (first trip back there 40 minute drive from my house) she said she could not do it, so I said just give me my money back for the charge of making the wine, the bottles and my fruit. then she agreed to put the wine in the carboy but I would have to come back and get the bottles and take them home and wash them, ( trip # 2 to pick up the dirty bottles) then I went in tonight and bottle my wine again ( 3rd trip) I lost most of my wine because of the bottles breaking, so the manager replaces my wine with hers, so I ended up with 60 bottles of wine and wasted at least 8 hours of my time driving, cleaning bottles and re bottling . What was my compensation for all this, not a darn thing, I did not even get help to bring my wine back into the store when I asked for as I explained I have a bad back and can't lift heavy object she looked at me and pointed at a dolly. Will never ever be BACK. Here to update my review, the owners of Rainy Crick had no Idea what had happened to me at the winery, she phoned me and said sorry, I got a full refund check in the mail today and a promise to do 2 batches of wine for me next year for free, and the girl that worked there is no longer working at Rainy Crick. Thank You to the owners , but it still caused me a lot of grief and work not to get a bottle of my wine from my plums.

They went over and above to take care of my business and offered a very fair price for helping me with my apple cider.