Penguin Bay Winery

Out of the 10 wineries in the fingerlakes that we visited this wine was the best bang for your buck. The tasting room was not super fancy but there is a big bar for tastings. You get a coupon with the tasting fee for $ 2 towards a bottle. Part of the proceeds go to penguins at a local zoo!

I liked this winery just based on the name. I love Penguins! I also enjoyed that they had sparkling wine. One of my favorites. I stopped here on a wine tour and it was a lot of fun. I liked that if you bought a bottle of wine with a penguin on it the donations went towards funding a zoo. Definitely interested in anything that helps a good cause!

This was our second stop on the wine trail and we had a lot of fun at this stop! We liked the fact that the guy doing our wine tasting gave us information about the wineries name and a little history. This was also the only place on our trip where I bought a bubbly wine from which I liked a lot during the tasting. The staff was very friendly and they had a wine slushy which I was told was very good and will have to try next time! The only thing that wasn’t as nice at this winery was that they don’t have a view of the lake which we all really liked having the view when possible!

This place attempts to be cute with the Penguin theme, but misses on the wine element. I sampled 5 dry reds and I spent the rest of the day trying to forget them.

The wines are delicious and reasonably priced. There are always good discounts for half cases, cases, etc. We’ve been here several times and the tasting room employees are always friendly, talkative and knowledgeable.

Love the whole penguin theme, but not the greatest experience on Seneca. Some of the wines are really tasty, but the atmosphere is somewhat unwelcoming with a lot of young and immature staff working there.

Almost didn’t go here because of the bad reviews. If you like Swedish Hill that is there sister winery. Most of their sweeter wines taste like grape juice but how cares they have wine slushies and staff was so friendly compared to other wineries on the trail.

I didn’t like their tasting room. Its like old warehouse. They have some tasty sparkling wine and semi-​sweet wines. .but not really special when you compare with other wineries… I don’t wanna go back.

We visited Penguin Bay as we are big on Sparkling and were told they had a good selection.
The tasting room looks like a big warehouse and isn’t warm/​wecloming at all.
We arrived to a woman who was not friendly and kept saying that they have a great selection of sparking at their sister winery but would not let us taste them here (though we could buy them!) Overall — I only bought 1 bottle of sparkling that seemed decent though pricey at $ 20 compared to others I had tried in the region.
Overall — I would skip this place. The woman did warm up towards the end but I expected more.

Don’t bother. My husband and I were there a few days ago and had the only negative experience there of all wineries we visited. We debated going inside when we saw the number of buses hauling people into the parking lot, but we went in against our better judgment. Once inside, we got to the bar for our tasting. It was packed, but we got our spot.
We overheard one of the men working behind the counter complaining that the line of people «never ends» as though he was being put out by customers. Be grateful people are coming because the wine isn’t that good!
Anyhow, my husband and I each paid our fee. After each of us tasted 3 wines, our server was nowhere to be found. We waited… and waited… and nobody came to help us. We left without completing our paid-​for tasting.
My husband and I were there with our baby daughter. We don’t drink much and were spitting out the wines so as to be responsible drivers. We’re genuinely interested in wines, not just getting s***-canned at each winery for a few bucks. Anyhow, I heard another less-​than-​polite man behind the counter calling people such us «ridiculous» for having our daughter with us.
The wines we did try were meh. There are better ones on Seneca. The service was terrible and I’ve, frankly, never felt such attitude and disrespect from a business.

The tasting room feels rather cavernous, with really high ceilings and a long, thin tasting bar in the back. The service was fine; the woman behind the bar took our tasting fee ($ 2 each) and we picked 8 wines each from their list.
Alas, the wines on the list… not terribly good. The only one I really liked, a sparkling white, was more than a little overpriced ($ 20 for a bottle of Charmat-​process sparkling wine? Unless I’m in Italy, drinking Prosecco, I’ll pass). The rest of the wines were fairly forgettable.
Were it possible to give a 2.5 star rating, I would, but in this case I can’t, so I’ll round down. If you’re driving past, and want to stop, then fine, but I don’t think I’d make a trip out to come here.