Spent some time here last summer and it was definitely worth the drive. The grounds of the winery are beautiful and very relaxing. There are some local parks in the area where you can take a picnic lunch, pick up a bottle from J. Maki and make a whole afternoon of it.The wine is great but the champagne is even better!If you are anywhere in the area, definitely stop by and try it out, you will not be disappointed.
J Maki winery makes amazing sophisticated and very European style wine right in beautiful Chester county. The wine makers do everything by hand and the care and craft shows in the wine. Their sparkling wine won first place at a blind tasting in France! The wine makers themselves are gracious hosts and a pleasure to talk to. I go back to buy wine as often as I can. Their VSP, Pinot noir and sparkling wines are my favorites.
Some of the most consistently very good to excellent wines can be found here – not a bad wine in the bunch. I always find an adequate wine in the wineries I visit to buy a bottle to support small independent wineries, but at J. Maki there are so many good wines, I need to hold myself back from buying so much. This is certainly not a place for the sweet wine drinkers, but then those folks have plenty of choices in most of the wineries in the State. I’m prone to saying that PA has a handful of excellent wineries, but I need to keep visiting PA wineries searching for another two wineries to join Waltz, Penns Woods and J. Maki to complete my handful. If only we could have our cold salmon picnic lunch in the vineyard to accompany a bottle of J. Maki’s excellent wines.
This is a terrible place.We did a tour of local wineries (on our own) for my birthday. This was by far the worst of all.They has a sign that said $15 tasting. We thought we were signing up for that, but we were definately wrong.The woman who gave us our tasting was downright rude. It seemed as though she could barely stomach us. The tasting was quick with little explaination. And when I say tasting, I mean tasting. There was a splash of wine of each. That's it. We were informed that those with an experienced pallet do not need any more than a splash.At the end of the tasting, when it was time to settle up, it ended up being $35 a person for 7 splashes of wine. She informed us though that we were "obligated" to purchase a bottle per person. We ended up spending $80 on 2 bottles of wine that I would be embarressed to give to anyone as a gift.The only positive note was the decor. It was a beautiful building.This was an awful experience and I highly recommened you check out one of the other great wineries in the area.
Wildly interesting stories from our host and sophisticated wines made this a very worthwhile stop. Some of the best dessert wines I've ever tasted.Bought all I could afford and wanted more.
The wine is very good for Pennsylvania wine. There is where the positive ends. A beautiful property with a sign at the entrance that amounts to "if your not buying don't bother stopping". The owner was extremely pompous until he realized my husbands extensive wine knowledge and accreditation. We purchased the obligatory 2 bottles to avoid the ridiculous tasting fee. Too bad because the place is beautiful and the wine pretty good. We came away feeling cheated.
Overpriced and $30 tastings? We been to so many terrific wineries including the Fingerlakes and have NEVER had such a bad experience. We felt very unwelcome.
We were the only people there and felt like a huge interruption. While the wine was good, not sure it justified $30 per tasting. Fortunately we bought some so we avoided that fee. Overall strange vibe, but we did like the wine.
My husband and I were in town visiting family and we love trying out new wineries so we saw J. Maki online and decided to check it out. When we got there the person that greeted us seemed somewhat irritated because we couldn't clearly find which part was the tasting room (not clearly marked.) Once inside we took note of all the awards and asked for a tasting. After they poured us the wine we noticed that it was written on a small chalkboard that it was $30 per person for a tasting unless you buy a bottle! So we tasted all the wines and really didn't care for any of them so ended up buying 2 bottles of their cheapest wine which was $30 each!! No thanks- I can think of a million better things to do with $60 in the middle of PA- it's not like we were in Napa or anything! I would like to note that none of the pricing info was on their website- I felt like we were lured into a trap being that we drove 40 min to get to this place. Seriously- save your $! Wine is gross and overpriced/ service is terrible!
My husband and I were spending a relaxing day in Elverson area and stopped in a Make Winery and very pleasantly surprised. We bought some of their excellent ice wine and loved their Chardonnay, as well. Worth the stop...