Firehouse Wine Cellars

Fun atmosphere. Best wines: colonol Purdy reisling and wildflower. The reisling is sweet and balanced and the wildflower is sweet. Like a delicious hint of wildflower. Some of their other wines are just ok. Ie: who wants custard in their wine!!! Not me!!! People serving are very nice and knowledgable!

We stopped in here after eating at the Firehouse Brewery. We sampled several wines and really loved the Colonel Purdy Sweet Riesling. We also loved the Maltese Cross Orange Muscat. The staff was very helpful and nice. We came back a few days later and bought a half a case to take home.

Ok, wine tasting in Rapid City, SD? Really? I was surprised, they have a great cab that is drinkable right now and a couple really good whites. 90 point wines, not really, but solid 83 – 87 point wines. Rapid City should be proud. I do a lot of wine tasting here on the west coast, nope not from Omaha. They do a really good job. I would like to see them develop some estate wines grown in SD.

On our way from Omaha we saw at least 4 – 5 billboards advertising this place. More specifically, these billboards advertised free wine tours daily at 1, 3, 5, and 7 PM. I have been on several wine tours before and thought that there was no such thing as a bad wine tour. This place definitely proved me wrong. I have now decided that any place that needs to advertise itself about 200+ miles out from the destination is a place that I should not visit.
We arrived promptly at 7 PM for the tour. The man who led it might have been the most lackluster individual I have ever met. From my experience, brewery and winery tour guides are usually really enthusiastic about what they do and where they work. The same could not be said for this man. He was about as dry as the red wine he served us. I think the idea is great as who doesn’t love a free tour that includes a taste of one of their beers, along with a taste of two wines (a mildly oaked pinot noir and a sweet white wine). With that said, I just couldn’t get over how bored I was and how much the man who led the tour just did not seem excited at ALL about this place.
After the tour, things only got worse. We went to the tasting bar to try some wines. There were three people working and only one customer, yet we were ignored for about 5 – 10 minutes until my husband got assertive and asked if we could do a wine tasting. The wines just seemed really off to me, almost watered down. I will say that they had a red blend that might be one of the best red blends I have ever tried. With that said, it wasn’t enough to save this place.
To think that I decided to come to this place instead of getting sushi… such a mistake.

I hesitated joining new winery due to the uncertainty of how the wine will taste, and the experience of the people producing a new product. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I joined the wine club, and so far every bottle of wine i received was very good, and I am quite picky. Keep up the outstanding work Firehouse wine cellars. Merry Christmas I will enjoy a bottle of Rebel Red tonight.