Cinder

I am an extreme wine novice. The wino world intrigues me and I am finding myself drinking wine more often. Yesterday my friend invited me for a glass at Cinder because her friend works there. I met her there at 4, and we were both surprised to see a wine tasting event going on. I have never been to a wine tasting but I was really excited and paid the $ 15 for my glass and headed to the first table. We made our rounds to the last table and finished the 8^th final tasting. I swished some water in my glass and poured it into what I thought was the discard carafe, (I’m not sure of the proper terminology) but apparently it was a pitcher of wine. Whoops! I didn’t know about this until the employee who my friend knows walked up to us and exclaimed, «which one of my friends poured their wine into the wrong pitcher??!» I was super confused and didn’t know it was me, but admitted it probably was, being a newbie. She was clearly humiliated and very upset. She agreed it was me because the culprit was wearing white. I profusely apologized and asked her who mentioned this so I could apologize to them as well, to which she replied, «EVERYONE is talking about it!» Uggh I felt really bad and stupid but felt like I could have been informed of this major faux pas in a nicer way. I’m also perplexed as to why someone didn’t stop me before I made this mistake, in the act. Regardless, I am too embarrassed to return to this place for the time being! I’m sure it’s not that big of a deal but in the moment, it was approached as a major deal. Thank god it was the last tasting otherwise I definitely would have immediately walked out, mortified.
The wine was great, the owners seemed really cool, the location and interior was amazing. Very unfortunate this mistake turned into a bad experience for me. Maybe when I feel more confident in my wine tasting skills, I will return!

*update
After posting my review below cinder wines contacted me to follow up. They forwarded me an email they sent (although I had no record of it in my inbox) and were really great about trying to remedy the situation.
Mistakes can always be made but how they are handled matters and they really made the effort to remedy this which demonstrates good customer service. So although I had an initially negative experience they made the effort to change that and I really appreciated it!
Original review:
I emailed cinder wines prior to Father’s Day. I live in San Diego but my dad lives in Boise and I wanted to get him a gift card there to go into the tasting room or potentially get some advice on wines to purchase for him. Their website for purchasing a gift card was clunky and it was not clear if the gift card would be delivered to him or available for pick up at the store. So I emailed them to clarify and never received a response and therefor never completed my gift card purchase.
Since then I have received multiple marketing emails which each time I go through the process to unsubscribe. Yet I keep receiving marketing emails from them. I just find it to be very poor customer service that they could not reply to my email about wanting to purchase a product from them but can take my information and add it to their marketing list.
So I can’t review their store or products but basically can attest to their very poor customer service skills.

This winery is local to Boise and crafts beautiful wines from the Snake River Valley. Go to the tasting room (weekends 12 – 5) and they will pour you a glass with a smile and tell you all about the wine. Very happy to support this business at my upcoming wedding.

Wow!!! This winery is AWESOME! Joe was great! Wish his wide Melanie were here she is the wine maker and home with little ones! Great wine, great people!!!

Last week I was unable to attend my friends birthday party at the Cinder tasting room but wanted to surprise her with a bottle of her favorite Cinder wine. Their staff was incredibly accommodating and helped me complete my birthday surprise! I strongly encourage that when you’re in town you give this place a try. Great service and even better wine!

We attended a wedding reception here a few weeks ago. This place is pretty amazing, both as a winery and as a party venue. Although fairly new to being a place to host your party event, this place pretty much nailed it. The wine we sampled was out of this world… especially the Tempranillo.

This is a great place to sample and buy some great local wine. I went here for a business mixer and got the grand tour by the owner of talaya wines. It is a very cool venue in the industrial area of garden city. They have a lot to choose from and incredible people that make it all come together.

This is an absolutely amazing little winery in the heart of the growing garden city area. If I was so inclined I would make this the centerpiece of a local winery/​brewery tour. We hung out with Joe in his beautiful tasting room well past closing and bought a bottle of their outstanding syrah for ourselves and their only slightly less fantastic rose for the party we were headed to.
This place is awesome!
UPDATE: Also, I recently heard that the gift store at the airport had a case of their 2010 syrah (which is now sold out), so I went over there and bribed the cashier at one of the stores before security to get someone working at the shop behind security to sell them all to me. Can’t wait to drink them!