Millstone Estate Winery

As an avid wine enthusiast, I recently had the opportunity to visit Millstone Winery. I must say that it was a disappointing experience. The wines served, particularly their Ortega and Pino Gris, were simply terrible.Let's start with the Ortega. It lacked any distinguishing characteristics and was completely devoid of full bodied flavour. The wine had a flat and watery taste, leaving a bitter aftertaste that lingered on the palate. It felt as if the grapes used were of subpar quality or perhaps mishandled during the winemaking process. Regardless, it was a sad representation of what an Ortega wine should be.The Pino Gris, unfortunately, fared no better. It lacked the delicate balance of acidity and fruitiness that is characteristic of a good Pino Gris. Instead, it had an unappealing, almost sour taste that overwhelmed any subtle notes that might have been present. It was like drinking a poorly executed experiment rather than a well-crafted wine.There are some great wineries on Vancouver Island, but in my opinion this isn't one of them.

Very friendly people there and their wines are very good! Thank you for the visit of the vineyard. ❤️

2 stars due to friendliness of the gentleman entertaining us. Wine not good at all.Cleanliness is an issue. Bathroom and bar area smelt like mouse/rat urine. Felt bad bought a bottle to support their business, thought the tester price would have been taken off for buying wine...nope.Really should have some type of food or even bread to go with wine testing. Place requires a good clean up. Would I return....nope.

A beautiful winery with wonderful people and animals. We came by when it was closed, whoops - but the owner still came rushing out to greet us and he opened up the wine tasting room and shop for us! We really appreciated it since we came all the way from Vancouver. I would still recommend following the store hours or calling them, we were super lucky that they were home when we came by - the owners live on-site.The wine was unique and it was explained well along with what food pairings would go great with each wine. We walked out with three bottles, yum! I will definitely be coming back to visit. They have chickens and three dogs who roam around the house who are all harmless - this place is children friendly, Daisy the golden lab can keep them busy (friendliest and most affection dog I've ever met).If you're in the Nanaimo area, I would definitely put this on your list of things to see & do!

I wanted to like and enjoy this winery, but the tasting experience made it impossible to do so. I asked if the tasting fee was waived with purchase and was told it wasn't, but that the $10 fee and taste of 5 wines would be equivalent to a whole glass. Well, the 5 tastes were certainly less than .5oz a peice. I'm not sure if anywhere pours a 2.5oz $10 glass of wine.Tasting half an oz of wine makes it very difficult to determine many aspects of the wine, unless it's faulted and then you know for sure. Which was absolutely the case here.There are some incredible wines and wineries on Vancouver Island, but this is NOT one of them.The whole experience would have been better if we'd had an inkling of customer service and possibly a story/ history of the wines and the winery. But all we got was our measly 5 X half oz tastes for $10.

These people are the most dishonest business people we have ever had the displeasure of doing business with. They took our deposit of $1000 for a private function, we found out the the health department had shut them down prior to our event. They refused to refund the $1000, instead offered two cases of their swill as compensation. Please consider going to a different Winery and not supporting these thieves. Thank you.

We would not recommend Millstone for wine tasting!We arrived at the winery and it looked closed despite the opening hours listed saying it was open. We specifically visited to do a wine tasting and were charged $10 for a dribble of each wine. Only after we started were we informed only 3 wines were available at the time. For the price paid we would expect a considerably larger tasting or a discounted price for the limited number of wines.The person who we did the tasting with seemed to be reading the description of the wines off the bottle and didn't really seem to know much about them at all.

Trying to support local but it is too costly. Bought a 2021 reisling, instead of a $24 price tag it should be $9. Could barely drink this oxidized wine. Very poor quality. Won't be back and won't recommend.

Had a great afternoon sipping some of their wine and enjoying the cheese and apple platter. The live jazz music was lovely and the free range chickens added a nice touch.The Cab- Merlot was a little pricy for a winery at $28 a bottle but it was very good. Would definitely recommend Millstone Estates Winery!