Hope Estate

Hope Estate was the lunch and wine tasting stop for our group. I’m not sure if it was the communication by our winery tour company or the estate itself, but there was hardly any interaction between the estate and my tour group. A few members of our tour had purchased the pizza package and were settled downstairs quickly. They were served almost immediately and their pizzas arrived fast and hot and had lots to eat!
On the other hand, there were about 12 of us left that had either picked the two course lunch and two glasses of wine, or the three course with three glasses of wine.
We sat for about ½ hour without anyone approaching our table of 9 on the outside deck. No water, no bread, no introduction, nothing. I had to grab a wait-​staff member so they could bring us the wine and she reacted a put off. I don’t want to sound as if we were expecting the finesse of a fine dining experience, but we were very unsatisfied with their service.
There wasn’t an explanation of the wines we sampled, they just asked if we wanted red or white with our meal and we weren’t told how we were being fed. An hour into us sitting there with one empty glass of wine food was literally «dropped» on the table. I had requested a vegetarian meal but was given steak. What happens, is they get a the number of mouths to feed from the winery tour company and then make three dishes and place them randomly so you’re not given a choice of what you want to eat. We still were in the dark so we thought the second course must be another dish option. not true. Luckily one of the dishes was a vegetarian gnocci otherwise I would have been out of luck.
This is where Hope Estate gets my 2 stars, because the gnocci was delicious! Creamy and perfect pasta texture. My table-​mates too really enjoyed their lamb or steak which they revealed the meat to be cooked to perfection and the portion sizes were huge. But then came the wait…
We sat their again without any staff approaching our table to refill wine or water glasses or even remove our food plates so decided to clear them ourselves and go find a staff member to help us.
Our second course was a dessert option which I passed on because I couldn’t eat either, the group from downstairs met us up on the deck and the estate began their 5 minute über rushed «wine tasting» more like wine guzzling.
My suggestion is to skip this large winery and get the love and attention you would at some of the smaller estates.

Came here on a wine tour run by our hotel. This was the first stop and I was pretty disappointed! It’s a brewery and a winery, but we only did the wine tasting. We tasted 4 wines, but weren’t offered any water or anything to clear out the glass with — the person giving the tour freely poured a Shiraz into the tiny amount of leftover Semillon in the glass before you even realized! He gave no context or information about any of the wines — aside from the obvious, that Hunter Valley is famous for verdelho, Semillon, and Shiraz — and was a little rude during my questions about what kind of grapes semillons are.