Today I want to talk about the Black Stallion Winery (
https://www.blackstallionwinery.com/) which is located in Napa, CA. I want to talk about the customer service experience Mrs. Desert Wine Girl and I had at the winery. I also want to talk about a particular wine. The very first time I came across a wine from the Black Stallion Winery was at a really nice restaurant that Mrs Desert Wine Girl and I were invited to so that I could do a review, this was in late 2015. At this restaurant it was suggested by my Waiter that the 2011 Black Stallion Cabernet Sauvignon would be a great wine to accompany my dinner. Let me tell you that the Waiter was indeed correct and the wine really rocked as it complimented the food incredibly well. The very next day I went out and purchased a couple of bottles of the wine as I had simply fallen in love with it the night before. I also of course, did a review (
https://desertwineguy.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-desert-wine-guy-2011-black-stallion.html) on the wine in which I rated it 93 points.
Back in April of this year Mrs. Desert Wine Girl as well as the girls of Mirror Image Vineyard and myself took a trip to the Napa Valley to visit some family as well as the wineries. One of the wineries that was mandatory to stop at was of course, the Black Stallion Winery. Allow me to now give you a brief rundown of the experience that Mrs Desert Wine Girl and I had at the winery. First of all the winery is simply beautiful. Walking into the winery, it was bright and laid out really nicely. The winery was clean, spacious, bright and smelled wonderfully of great wine. The winery luckily was also not busy at all probably because it was the middle of a weekday. We walked in and wandered around for a while and I thought it was nice to also see the Vineyards form the Tasting Room. I almost immediately noticed as we walked to the Tasting Bar, a very prominently displayed gift set
which the winery calls the "Triple Crown". The gift set consisted of the 2017 Limited Release, Sauvignon Blanc, the 2015 Limited release - Cabernet Sauvignon & the 2016 Limited release - Pinot Grigio. I thought buying this gift set was simply a no brainer, of course I did also taste each of the wines and remember being really impressed by them. Aside from the wines there were two people of note that I need to mention here in this article. The first individual is the person who poured our wines and that is Jorge Chavez. When we approached the Tasting Bar aside from me being in awe at the Triple Crown gift set we also met Jorge as he was
the person performing my tasting. Jorge was just absolutely awesome and spent so much time with us, engaging us in conversation about the wine industry in
general as well as of course the Black Stallion wines, the winery itself and the Indelicato Family. Jorge was super interesting as well and very down to earth.
Now we get into the main reason why I wrote this article and that is because of the second person that I need to talk about. Not only is Jorge a perfect example of great Customer Service but so is their person in charge of Direct Sales & Wine Club Rep, Mrs. Celeste
Cooper. Celeste was on one hand very professional in our communications and on the other she also came across as
super cheerful and as someone who truly loved her job and dealing with people. Let me tell you how I came into contact with Celeste. One of the wines that I was poured that day at the winery and which really impressed the heck out of me is the 2016 Black Stallion - Limited Release,
unfiltered Chardonnay. I did a review on this wine
https://desertwineguy.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-desert-wine-guy-2016-black-stallion.html) and it scored 96 points on The Desert Wine Guy rating scale. The wine is in fact the highest rated white wine that I have ever reviewed. The only mistake that I made at the winery which turned out to be a big problem was that I only purchased one bottle of the wine and this leads me to a problem. The problem on my end cropped up after the review. That problem was I loved the wine and I wanted more. Well I did what anyone would do and got on their website but I could not find the wine, in fact I couldn't find it anywhere including at my local big box Liquor stores. Go ahead and search for yourselves. Check their the Black Stallion website and try to find the wine to purchase, keep searching because you will not find it.
The wine is unfortunately available at the winery only, or perhaps from their wine club(s), that I am not sure about. I still needed more of this wine though. Being The Desert Wine Guy I decided that I had to do something. I managed to find Celeste's name somewhere on their website and I contacted her to see if there was a way that I could get a few bottles of the wine shipped to me at my home. Celeste was suprprisengly more then happy to accommodate me and I very happily ended up purchasing three bottles of the wine from her. I have to once again say thank you so very much to Jorge and Celeste for making it a pleasure to do business with the Black Stallion Winery.
In closing I must tell you that the Napa Valley has a lot of wineries to visit and a lot of wines to choose from as well. For some reason a lot of those wineries have the attitude that the wine consumer should be grateful that the winery actually let them in to have the honor of sampling their wines. Now to me that is a great way to have me not come back to that winery. A business (in this case a winery) should actually have the opposite mindset as the customer should be embraced and thanked for spending their time and their money at that business. The Black Stallion Winery is not one of the wineries that treat you as if you owe them, they treat you like you are indeed a valued and appreciated customer. I highly recommend that if you are headed to the Napa Valley that you make a stop at the winery and of course buy a few bottles of their wines. Should you however not be headed to Napa anytime soon you need to get on their website and buy some incredible wine from them or find their wines at your local retail store, you will not regret it.
One last thing before I finish this article. As far as the actual delivery of the wine goes, keep in mind
that the wine is due to arrive tomorrow but I am constantly getting
updates on the whole delivery process from their chosen carrier, FedEx.
All around, the Indelicato Family is a top notch winery to do business
with and I highly recommend their wines as well. This may be kind of
weird but on The desert Wine Guy rating scale I give the Black Stallion
Winery itself 100 points.
P.S. - I received the wine today and I have done a video on the unboxing and the wine which I will be working on getting posted soon. Take a look at the picture I included and look at how they placed special insulation around the wine, also included freeze packs to ensure your wines are well protected from the heat that they may encounter during shipment. All in all I am thoroughly impressed with the Black Stallion Winery and will be buying more wine from them in the near future.
The Desert Wine Guy
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