Giessinger Winery

I have been wanting to stop and do a tasting here for almost 20 years. I finally did!
The overall experience was very nice. The winery/​tasting room is a large former warehouse along the railroad tracks just down from the Fillmore station and city hall.
Our server, Candy, was charming, knowledgable and enthusiastic about the wines she let us sample. Even though we came in just 10 minutes before closing time, she led us on an almost one hour tour of the winery’s products. And she pointed out that the advertised 8 wine sampling was the minimum– we ended up tasting at least 12!
The down side was that many of the offerred wines were musty and past their prime. Production is sporadic, and some of the whites were produced 5, 6 or 7 years ago! Even several of the reds had an «off» taste. Some of the fresher desert wines were very good, but overall, I left a bit disapointed with what I had tasted.

What a cute place… and yummy wines. Candy, our wine guru, pourer, sommelier, was awesome and so sweet. We had a good time flying thru our wine flight. We took home a bottle of unfiltered Syrah to enjoy. Their wine has great flavor… and their Surrender at the end is perfect.

We love this winery, I am not a wine snob, but in the past 2 years that i have been dating my fiancé we have turned wine tasting into a past time that we both enjoy. What I learned is that my wine palette says I enjoy the wines from steel barrels, which is the great difference that Eduard barrels his wines. When we wine taste its always a new experience because we are not wine connisseurs. This winery pays attention to the customers palette. Each wine is thoughtfully crafted by the owner with the customer in mind. Eduard (the owner) is blunt and passionate about what he likes and his wine. Do not be intimidated but come in and enjoy the variety of wines that Geissenger has to offer. Locations in Westlake Village & Santa Barbara.

In a word: AVOID.
We stopped in today on a lark — biggest mistake of my wine drinking life.
Where to start??? OK: These guys are selling 2008 white wines (in 2015), and they are horrid.
Next, the reds: all with very odd tastes, most with tons of residual sugar (which any serious winemaker would turn into «sink wine», sending it down the sink rather than into a bottle), and no flavors remotely pleasurable to drink.
What was more egregious was that ALL of the bottles being used today — April 8 — had «3÷28» written on the back label in pen. I’m presuming this was the date each of the bottles was opened — and I can tell you, these all tasted like bottles which had been long opened and left in the sun.
Even though they hadn’t been. In fact, the lady went out of her way to say that their Barbera was «supposed to be served chilled from the refrigerator».
Indeed, one of them was so old that the sediment actually clogged the pour-​spout, and NOTHING CAME OUT!!! (Although, the shaking of the Chocolate ‘Port’ to get the chocolate flavor back into was probably the funniest thing I saw today.)
The bottom line is that this place has no business calling it’s liquids wine. They are swill. A reviewer in 2013 stated so, and in 2 years, they haven’t got any better.
Probably because, 2 years later, the Geissingers are likely selling the same stuff because they have so much excess, ancient inventory, they can’t give it away. But they’ll sell it for $ 25 or more a bottle to unsuspecting people.
Note also that these guys grow a grand total of ZERO grapes a year. They buy all their juice. My guess is that they’re buying stuff for maybe $ 10 a ton — which is basically to say that they are buying juice from people in Lodi, Santa Clara (huh? Isn’t that where Intel’s located???), Paso Robles, etc who are trying to DUMP their crap. I’m guessing this is junk that not even Two-​Buck-​Chuck would buy.
So don’t waste your time, and certainly not any money on this stuff. I am mad at myself for paying even the tasting fee. It is literally WRONG that the Geissingers can charge you anything in good faith for either the tasting or for what they’ve put into a bottle and try to pass off as wine. It’s not wine. It’s junk.
Oh, and yes — it’s truly bad form to not refund someone’s tasting fees when they buy a junk wine from you that you’re trying to unload on an uninformed public. They should be ashamed of this whole sham operation.

long story short… no fan or ac for employes, customers or wine. Wines taste rancid or corky. Get wine from the nearest liqour store instead.
Please belive the reviews from the 365 Santa Clara page. $ 10 for a flight of 8 is not a bad deal. The place is decent looking, but it was pretty warm inside, no ac and no fan. Not good for a customers, employees and especially a winery. The first red flag should have been the chardonary sitting on an outside table in 95 degree weather. The wines all pretty much tasted like cork or just straight rancid. I have have had better wines fron a liqour store. Only one of the 8 was half way decent, because the host had just opened it in front of me. The host was great and profesional despite the very uncomfortable temperature inside. She tried to upsell a bottle to us, but we needed to get out of there because we were sweating withong the first 10 minutes. If you dont want to store wines properly and have an unwelcoming establishment, just sell Boones, Night Train and Thunderbird.

Full disclosure: I’m not a wine drinker – really more of a craft beer lover. That being said, I’ll give my review from that perspective and that alone. I really, really enjoy Giessinger in Fillmore.
I’m sorry I don’t remember her name but the lady normally there on Saturdays is wonderful. She’s very attentive, extremely friendly and makes you feel right at home.
They have a couple of tables and you can sit on the patio or the lawn, which I really enjoy. I go there quite often and bring my dog and she always brings water without having to ask – the lady, not my dog.
To fully expose my ignorance of wine, I order the «sweeter white» and she always seems to know what I’m talking about. They do have a couple of beers on hand but none that I’m particularly fond of so I get the «sweet one.»
I’m not going to compare this to other wineries and the quality of their wine verses a Napa or French – as mentioned, it’s not my goal. I’ll only say this. It’s a very friendly, relaxing place to go and they’re pet friendly. If you’re in the area, it’s well worth stopping in. Maybe you like the wine, maybe you don’t. But it’s a great place nonetheless.

The location is very cute and the wine is ok. The server was very sweet and friendly, but she knew nothing about the wine she was serving. For $ 10 the flight is reasonably priced, but the bottle price is kind of steep.

Wine, trains and honey.. oh my.

Today was my second time visiting the winery and I enjoyed it just as much as my 1^st (a couple years ago). The $ 8.00 for wine tasting for the amount of wine you get is definitely worth it. We were given very decent sized tastes and I loved most of them. Due to budget I was very sad I was only able to bring home 2 bottles (I don’t think you can taste the Forgiveness without buying a bottle), but I will be going back and I won’t take nearly as long to do so.
Also, Rosie who served us is awesome! Very sweet and a great conversationalist! We definitely stayed longer than planned and that isn’t a complaint. She made it rather enjoyable so if you’re ever passing through Fillmore (or if you live there) follow the signs to the winery and pay her a visit. Even if you don’t buy anything, the tasting is worth it!

Forget the wines what happened to the freaky guy who use to work there?! He was a ‘psychic’ and legally changed his name to something like Diablo Evilguy – no kidding. He gave me the creeps big time! If he’s gone for good I’ll give it 3 stars.

If this winery was anywhere else I would not give it 4 stars, but its in Fillmore, so it gets an extra star just for being there!
If you have ever been to Fillmore you understand. Don’t get me wrong, I love Fillmore, (grew up there and really there is no place like home) but there is not alot to do…
I have been tasting there twice and both times were enjoyable. The second time I was on a date so I wish the woman pouring wines would have picked up on the subtle cues and stopped including herself in our conversation, but there was only one other party in there at the time, and I guess our conversation was more interesting for her to interject in.
If you are in Fillmore, its a fun place to sip on wine with friends, and enjoy the quaintness of a small town :) If you are driving and need some time to walk off your wine before heading out on the 126, there are some cute antique shops right across from City Hall.
You can even make an evening out of it, have some food at one of our fine local establishments (Margrets Cocina is one of my favorites, or check out Fillmore’s one and only sports bar Central Station for some tasty Tri-​Trip) then head over to the Fillmore Towne Theater for a movie at 7pm (check out my review on that too…)

Ok first of all $ 8.00 to taste 16 wines! yes 16!!!
ok thats 5 stars right there. The wines were decent. Nothing too great but not too bad either. However, the two girls more than made up for it. They were great… they joked around with us, told us about the wines, and generally had a good time.
However, be careful if you go right before a train leaves… they get an INFLUX of people!