Taste of Temecula

BEWARE! The operator, Ian Balfer, is not a reputable person. This tour is a SCAM. To begin he never answered our calls for a tour meeting location. His emails never indicated a meeting location either. When we finally did reach him by phone he told us that the tour was cancelled. REALLY! To make matters worse, he then told us he would call ahead to the merchants on the tour and set it up for us to do a self tour. HA. When we got to a couple of the merchants they told us he never called and further he was not welcome in their businesses. He is a known bad operator who apparently does this sort of thing often. STAY AWAY! We believe his business has other names, one is «Temecula On Tap“and another is «On Tap Tours». The later is the one we dealt with.

This was huge mistake! I received an email from Ian the morning of the tour with a location other than what was on my ticket confirmation. Check in was supposed to be at 1130. I called him and he was screaming into the phone and then later told me he would be late because they were dropping off food at the various locations. We met at a winery and was given food that was bought from the grocery store. Catered food… I think not! We had four glasses of wine. Then Ian announces that we would be headed to Old Town Temecula… little did we know that on this tour we would have to DRIVE OURSELVES! We got to the second place and it was a small shop (it had loose leaf tea which made me happy), but we were told we all couldn’t go in at once. It’s 104 degrees outside. But to make a long story short… it was very unorganized! The catered food looked more like food prepared the day before OR like it was purchased at a taco shop. The heat, they had no control over, but making people wait around until you get yourself situated is bad business. I wouldn’t recommend this place to my worse enemy!

This is now called «On Tap Tours». All of the other one star reviews are spot on. The only thing that redeemed this tour was the STUDENT (NOT an official gourmet chef) from the culinary school. Althena brought much more food than our guide expected and it was delicious. Thank goodness she did since our scheduled last stop at a great restaurant was cancelled at the last minute. Ian had a dozen excuses. Instead we ended up at Lorimar with fabulous wine. However, the great pairing that we paid for from a selected winery and top-​notch restaurant ended up being a «you choose» your tastes and some store bought fruit you could dip in the chocolate Ian melted in the corner of the tasting room.

It’s a scam!!! I called the guy ian and he never called me back. He changed his company name. When i told him i was going to file a claim he then said he is starting a new business and he’ll make it up to me.

Sponsored by the Temecula Valley Foundation for Excellence in Education (TVFEE), the Taste of Temecula Valley (TOTV) is held annually, rain or shine, on the last Saturday of April, located at Town Square in front of Temecula City Hall, Old Town Temecula. This event combines live performances from local and nationally-​known entertainers with an opportunity to sample Temecula Valley’s finest foods, wines, and beers.

Warning do not do business with this company!!! Ian (owner) is a very talkative and seemingly likeable person but he totally stood my group up. He left me a message that he was sorry and that he would issue me a refund. NOT!!! I finally got ahold of him again and he said he was waiting to have enough money in his account to issue the credit. I never got it!!! I filed a dispute with my credit card company who issued me a credit but now he has charged my credit card again (different value). What the heck!!! Totally dishonest business.
4÷13÷14 Update: Watch out for this guy. This time he changed his company name (Temecula on Tap now) and charged my card AGAIN!!! Had to cancel my credit card to prohibit this from every happening again.

I was just reading this to see if this jerk is still selling these tours, I went weekend of June 21, 2013 and it was a disaster, went right along with most of the other reviews and now my review is gone from Unilocal,so I am here to say, this is the most unprofessional person ever and I cannot believe he is still selling these pairing tours and serving wine out of trunk of his car and good from Costco, terrible food, only visited one winery, Lorimar and it was nice, we left from there and went out to the valley to Ponce Winery. Where did my post go, another man from our tour posted same day and his post his gone too.

This joker Ian charged my account again & still no tickets. Thankfully, my bank has my back & I’ve reported this guy to the BBB.

This is a total rip-​off and a scam! I actually want to report it to the better business bureau and have it shut down. We went on a «tour» that was called Wine Pairings and there wasn’t a single pairing all day. At one point he bought like 4 appetizers to feed 20 plus people and brought his own cheap cheap cheap wine in from his car to drink with it and then at the end brought in a $ 10 grocery store cake to eat! He also brought us to a candy shop at one point and told us to go in and ask for free samples while he suspiciously waited outside. That was actually part of his «tour»! I am not joking, this was absolutely ridiculously awful! DO NOT SPEND YOUR MONEY!!!

I was worried by all the negative reviews but I thought I would give it a try. We loved it. My boyfriend and I went on this tour for our anniversary and it was awesome. Great food and great wine. Ian the owner even surprised me with followers at the end of our tour just because it was our anniversary. We will be doing this tour again real soon.

Save you time do NOT do this tour. This tour didn’t even happen and I had to call my credit card company to get my money back. The tour guide arrived late and told us the organizer’s card was getting decline after we wasted an hour just sitting around.
Possible a scam so save your time and $$ and avoid this.

Huge rip-​off!!! This joke, named Ian was almost 1 hour late, looked like hell, changed meeting locations without notifying everyone in our group, then serves us nasty mexican food at 11am. Who wants nachos when they are expecting «wine and food pairings»?
The entire day was a complete waste of time. Ian does nothing more than take you shop to shop where «free samples» flow, candy, root beer, olive oil, etc. If you are looking for wine and food pairing please avoid this character and his front of a business. I read many of the other reviews and was laughing hysterically, because their experiences were identical to ours. I could write a book about our wasted day, however I would rather just save some folks their money by offering a warning instead.

Ok, we meant to give the review months ago and now feeling really guilty we didn’t do it! (We were there with the Previous reviewers Ellen C. & Kathy N I believe. A very nice but sadly unlucky group of Bridesmaids) who unfortunately bought the deal thru LS or Groupon like we did.
This was by far the most lame unorganized, uncomfortable, crappiest walking tour we wasted so much time on! I have more choice words but trying to keep it civil.
I should have known when we first met at a subpar Mexican restaurant that consisted of passing around plates of stale chips and salsa, gross nachos, plates of frozen style chili rellenos, and enchiladas you wouldn’t serve your dog. Oh yeah there was sangria in pitchers that got passed around to about 25 people that we were thankful we had to wash down and hopefully ease the pain of sitting thru a pathetic discussion of the tour we were about to embark on! Tour? Perfect Pairings? Wine pairings? really its a mystery how this freaky Duo of what looked like 2 homeless men that just rolled out from under the local freight trains could actually attempt to call this scam!!! Yeah it was more like an imperfect pair alright! And the Biggest Train wreck EVER! But there we all were listening to history about the area? No. Info on Local Wineries? No. Info on Gourmet food and wine? No. all they did was give us sketchy directions to the next stop. Like I said I should have known and just ran out of the place and jumped in our car and called it a day.
Needless to say, as we continued to be led to the next stop a Lavender shoppe, that specializes in soaps and oils. All very nice but why were we there? We all started to ask questions now and talk amongst ourselves as each of us started to arrive as some had problems parking and finding the place. Sketchy like I said. So the older man says we’re here and leads us in to get free samples?!! Really??? That’s the point we realized I think that we had all been scammed!
Let me tell you it continued sadly walking from store to store in the heat being led by Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum to get free samples that anyone off the street could have done on their own! Not a drop of wine or food!
Some of us were actually laughing and were in shock as to how lame this was and maybe wanting to watch the train wreck unfold.
We did at some point towards the end, finally get a wine sample and Gourmet food. And by gourmet food I mean those really huge marshmallows you can buy at the 99 cent store, some fruit, semi melted chocolate (fondue) Fon’don’t! and a store bought veggie platter and dip??? And then to make matters worse the Owner of the company (picture of the guy on Unilocal photos) started to tell everyone how busy his business is and how he’s planning a
«Party like a Rockstar» with limos taking everyone old town and to wineries! .Crickets chirping… everyone just sat and listened to this ragamuffin with our mouths open or downing what little was left of any wine to ease more pain… more crickets chirping… Really? I would not EVER go anywhere near these two weirdos again much less purchase anything EVER again from them!
Yeah, my husband said this is it, we’re done and we left the rest of the group to fend for themselves and walked out the backdoor! We may have actually been power walking/​jogging/​ok we were running.
We ended up having a serious laugh about it over dinner and real glasses of wonderful wine and conversation with some lovely employees at another Wine Store who were sympathetic to our wasted time and who get this… knew about these scammers already! And the talk around Old Town Temecula is that they are not welcome there and keep changing their name to throw more unsuspecting victims off to their scam! I think if I were to ever see these two again, I may have to point and scream REALLY loudly to warn other potential victims who didn’t get the chance to read this review. BTW there’s a picture of the Mastermind in the photos the guy with the blue shirt holding the martini? And the other pictures of people looking like they are having a blast and pics of gourmet burgers, must be of an all together different group or organization they are not legit!

So my friend took me on the «food & wine PAIRING» tour over the weekend. NO such «pairings» happened. Looking at the website & email about things happening «SHARP», we expected something more «classy» & organized. It said to meet at 11:15 as we’d be leaving 11:30 SHARP. I read about a trolley & was expecting a trolley to tour downtown while having food & wine pairings… it was quite the opposite…
It was very unprofessional. Ian, the owner (tour guide) shows up looking like a disaster. No professional clothing, no company logo… first thing out of his mouth «I’ve been calling the tour guide for 2 hours & she’s not answering. She must be drunk». You do not start by insulting your employee. This «tour» just started, so I’m hopeful.
It DID start out well. We started at the meeting place: Villa di Callabro Winery & Olive Oil. The owner Mike was excellent & presented the oil olives. We tried various pairings of olive oils and balsamics that complimented. Ian passed out name tags … then he COLLECTED them! WTF? Aren’t name tags to be used? Also, I was expecting wine to be paired w what we’re tasting. Am I expecting too much on this «food & wine pairing tour»? Wine tour… & 1^st stop no wine… I heard something about going to Sweet Lumpy’s BBQ… on a wine tour… didn’t make sense. After the olive oil tasting, my friend & I went to the bathroom. I all of a sudden I thought I saw people walking past my peripheral & realized that people were gone! WTF? My friend was still in the bathroom, so I couldn’t wander far looking. I went back for my friend & hoped they went to the BBQ I heard. What type of tour LEAVES w/​o checking for people? My friend calls the guy, which he didn’t answer till the 3^rd time saying he wasn’t even planning on answering! Um, can I have a copy of the itinerary?
Sweet Lumpy’s BBQ. I’ve never heard of BBQ paired with wine! No one ate breakfast, expecting a «food & wine pairing» tour. At Lumpy’s our group bonded… over the fact that we felt scammed & thought this «tour» was a joke. Ian brings out 3 bottles of almond champagne… orders 2 plates of fried green beans & 2 plates of pulled pork… to be shared w 17 people! Each of us got about a Costco sized sample… almond champagne… I heard him saying it was like $ 6 a bottle… at least bring us beer. BEER goes with BBQ. At this point 2 guys said this was a joke, peace out & left us… down to 15
3^rd stop: Root beer shop on a wine tour? This guy MUST be joking! The store was nice & gave us 8oz samples in which we gulped down bc we were hungry & thirsty! Here, we lost 4 more; down to 11! Ian didn’t seem to give a rats ass. Why would he… he already got people’s money! … NOT a honest business person!
4^th stop… a candy shop? We got a sample of apple candy which was a sliver about ½×¼ inch. Ian told us to sample fudge & disappeared. No idea what’s going on & what to do. Just ask for samples? How many? We could tell the employees frustrated & irritated — w Ian, not us. A worker brought us chocolate covered bacon. Ian reappeared & told us ice cream was next. Ice cream was the samples which they scoop that little spoon. 4^th stop, still NO wine & NO pairings!
Finally, our 5^th stop was a WINE place. We went to Lorimar. The guy here was Matt. He was VERY nice, professional, & actually educated us on wines & what they went with. Ian brought some grapes, strawberries, & chips w a pineapple salsa as snacks. Snacks? We didn’t even have a meal yet! We had 6 wine tastings… no «pairings». Regardless, we ate up the snacks bc everyone was starving. Here, we talked & laughed… about how we were expecting a hidden camera to come out & say this was a joke! It was here that 4 of the 6 people that left earlier came back… they wanted their wine!
Throughout this WHOLE «food & wine pairing tour» Ian would talk about how great the LAST time was & how THIS time, all the businesses are screwing him over. He also constantly talks about how he’s trying new business ventures & how his tours have been successful. Seriously? If that’s the case… then it SHOULD be organized & professional. We felt like he was just taking us to store w samples & taking advantage of the FREE samples!
Ian tells us that we had «lunch» at Lienzo Charro in which we had to drive to. Lunch? It’s 4 pm! At this point, we lost 9 more. SIX of us stuck it to the end & went to Lienzo Charro, afterall, we’re still starving! Ian ordered 1 pitcher of sangria, 1 plate of nachos & 1 plate of enchilada to be SHARED amongst the 6 of us! It felt very awkward & we just ate & left as politely as possible.
The ONLY thing that saved us from this tour was the awesome group of people that we had. We bonded over a BAD experience! We went from 17 to only 6 people! That should tell you something! Please stay away and save your time & money. As for the 2 people here who wrote 5 stars… I have NO idea what tour they went one… but it wasn’t the same one!

NOT worth your money or TIME.
Go to wine country and do the wine tasting on your own!
Listen to all of the (unfortunately bad but true) reviews! My bf and I went thinking maybe the said below reviews were just one party, but… they’re pretty spot on. I’ll just write my thoughts in addition to the ones below. (I wonder how much the people writing the nice, five-​star reviews were paid to write those?)
The website called this a «perfect pairing tour»… Perfect pairing of what? A waste of money and time? Certainly wasn’t a tour of wine and food pairing; we got one type of wine, which was from a bottle from a grocery store. We never even stepped foot in a winery! Oh wait, we did, but all we got were olive oil tastings. Even with our amazingly good deal (we paid less than $ 20 for two people), I would not suggest this tour to anyone.
The wine we were served was apparently moldy (our end of the table was given a fresh bottle) and served in dirty, dusty glasses at Knuckleheads. What were we doing at Knuckleheads? Beats me. It wasn’t anything different from your below-​average pub.
The Lorimar winery «backed-​out» (was there ever even a contract with them in the first place, I wonder?). We all got upset so Ian, the owner and tour guide, called Bella Vista to have a free wine tasting. The wine tasting is normally $ 10 pp, so we basically just paid for that and got a free tour of Temecula.
The one nice thing about this tour was seeing stores that we probably wouldn’t have seen on our own, like the Spice Merchant and Root Beer Company. However, as the reviews below say, when we went to these places, especially the Sweet Shop, we didn’t get any special treatment like a history of the store or samplings not otherwise available to the general public.
I wish we had seen the reviews before we bought our Living Social deal; we wouldn’t have bought them if we had…

My bridesmaids had arranged with this «business», what they thought was going to be a fabulous tour of Old Town Temecula, for part of my Bachelorette festivities.
We had to make the best of our time during the tour, because it turned out to be a complete rip off. My girls had put so much time and money into planning out this «tour», and it turned out to be a scam. The concept of the «tour» is fantastic — it really is. However, the execution is absolutely terrible. Disastrous, even. All 5 of us left before the «tour» was even over, because it was a complete waste of time. We ended up heading out to a couple of the nearby wineries, and had a GREAT time. We had certainly left Old Town with a bad taste in our mouths. Or should I say, a bad «Taste of Temecula.»
The «Directors of Fun», as they call themselves, had the large group (there were about 25 people who started the «tour») trekking up and down the main street in Old Town on a hot day. We had hardly any food and wine samples, so everyone was getting hot, tired, hungry, and thirsty. Only a few of the businesses we visited were even expecting our group to come by. The lack of organization was obvious.
Please do not waste your time and money. I do NOT recommend whatsoever.

DONT GET RIPPED OFF!
The person in charge is unprofessional:
1. Does NOT reply to emails or phone calls.
2.Sends different itineraries so you never really know what is going on or what is set.
3. Doesn’t even stay with the group throughout the LAME tour
4. Makes false promises (had our group pay EXTRA so that our bride to be could receive extra gifts when she received NOTHING)
5.Doesn’t even plan out the event. At each site attended you could tell nothing had been set up, someone in our group even overheard a worker say «well if we had known you were coming, we could have set something up».
Tour is a bust: nothing is organized, and nothing is included. If you want something from a location besides just smelling (fudge, tea) be prepared to fork out money. We would have been better of arranging a self guided tour. Not worth your money at all and in fact ITS A SCAM!!! So upset over this fake tour!

In addition to Karen P’s review of this event. I also like to add a couple of things…
FIRST– do not waste your money, whether you think you got a great deal thru Groupon or Living Social. It’s just not worth it!!!
I planned this event for my BFF (the bride to be) soirée. In the beginning, Ian was responsive and had great ideas for the event. Then I made the mistake of putting a“deposit” in, in which he charged ($ 250 X 4)… when I tried to reached out to him, he had so many different excuses. The communication from him became less frequent to non-​existent. He also charged us more per person ($ 49pp) because there would be a «special gift» for the bride at each venue and the itinerary he provided us included additional wine and food tasting…
I quickly became frustrated of being overcharged that I had one of other members in the bridal party reach out to him to follow-​up on the plans for the event… the day before the event, we get two different itineraries with different meeting points. We didn’t know which one to go to… finally we call him and it was the one that he sent to me (to meet at some Mexican Restaurant) on Front St. It seemed promising and he provided us with VIP badge… except the VIP badge was meaningless…
Our bridal party was a part of a groupon/​living social group outing
There was no «special gift» for the bride at each stop…
We were told to «pace» ourselves, but all we had to eat was mediocre mexican food… and at the Lorimar Winery… unmelted «fondue» with supersized marshmallows, slimy strawberries and bananas and huge brusied apples… he didn’t even have the decency to put it normal serving plates, it was a styrofoam 99 cent plates.
Obviously, at this point we were so annoyed by the lack of organization and the awkward tour guide (he called himself the Director of Fun). I asked Ian, what was going to be next venue. He had the audacity to be sarcastic and say «don’t you know, I sent you the itin?» I asked him to be specific and he said there was 2 more stops (including another winery)…but apparently from the review below, that was BS.
At that time, I was over the bullsh*t and we left. FYI– «Taste of Temecula» is also «A Pefect Pairing Tour» on Unilocal (they have also received negative Unilocal Reviews, due to the lack of organization and false promises… overall more lip service than anything
Unilocalers– Do NOT waste your money, you can do your own self-​guided tour in Old Town Temecula and use that money to treat yourself to something much more better!

I originally booked a food and wine lovers tour on a Saturday that meets at Villa Di Calabro, but because of unfortunate circumstances I wasn’t able to make it. Ian, who I had regular communication with was nice enough to let me reschedule the tour for the following weekend. He didn’t have to, but I thought it was such a sweet gesture that he allowed me to still book the tour. This time, the meeting place was at Lienzo Charro. Our ‘Director of Fun’ Robert introduced himself and led us to a large long table waiting for us at the restaurant and the tour was booked at full capacity– 24 people. All of us were stoked and excited as we sampled some really good sangria, chicken nachos, and cheese enchiladas. We were told there was more great stuff on this tour and to look forward to what was ahead. I didn’t want to get too stuffed, so I had a glass of sangria and some nachos, excited about what we were going to taste next.
After some great food and conversation, Robert tells us to meet at a parking structure off Mercedes St. «Go straight onto the road and turn right on Mercedes St…» was what I heard. So bf and I hop into the car and we’re driving through old town Temecula, trying to spot a street that said «Mercedes.» But we weren’t able to find it. So we turned back around, stopped our car and entered Mercedes onto our GPS and the street wasn’t even on the main street! We finally found our group via GPS at the parking structure. Well apparently, we weren’t the only ones who misheard the directions because there were a lot of people who weren’t able to find their way. OK, slight miscommunication, that’s fine, it happens. No Big Deal.
Our walking tour of Temecula had begun. Our first stop was at a lavendar store. I was talking toward the tail end of the group and therefore did not really hear what Robert had said but all I remember was everyone going into the lavendar store. We went in, and came out. No samples, no stories about the significance of going into this particular store, it was just a enter and exit kind of a deal. Then. we were led to candy store where we could sample some fudge, which we did– available to the public. We also paid a visit to the spice store in temecula where we sampled some tea– available to the public. We passed by The Bank– a mexican restaurant now but was a previous bank. Robert told us about a bank robber who may have gotten shot out in the street back in the day. and I think that was the first and only historical news I heard on the tour. We passed by a restaurant called The Edge, went to a root beer place (no samples), then passed the Edge again to the theater. Looked around the theater, came right back out, went to Lorimar winery, had 3 small «tastes» of wine with fondue and fruit. We anchored at the Lorimar winery for a good hour and a half. They had fruit and marshmallows waiting for us with fondue. We were told there would also be an assortment of paninis coming out and when they came out, it was literally 20 pieces that was supposed to be shared amongst 24 people. This is when the tour really took a turn and a lot of people had left by now. We then went BACK TO the Edge Restaurant for our final stop where we ordered 4 appetizers to end off our day.
I really dont know where to begin with this tour. It started off great, Lienzo Charro was a great restaurant that served ample amounts of food. We then moved to old town Temecula, but I didn’t really learn too much about its historical content. We stopped by some random stores along the way and got free samples, but they were samples that were available to the public; people not on the tour also got free samples. We paid money to be on this tour, so I expected to get more than just free samples. It was a hot sunny day and having to walk back and forth was a little irritating on a lot of people. People on the tour expected there to be more food, more wine, and a little more fun. It really speaks volumes when your party leaves even before the tour ends. We started off with 24 people, but by the time we got to our final destination there were 8. Every stop we make should have counted for something instead of what seemed to be randomly walking in and out of the stores. It would have been nice to experience something special we normally wouldn’t get to experience without a tour. thats why we paid money. If we are going to walk into a root beer store, give us samples of root beer floats to try. If we’re going to go into a lavendar store, give us some lavendar treats. If we’re going to go on a theater visit, give us some free theater discount tickets. ANYTHING.
Even though this was a food and wine lovers tour, there wasn’t too much food or wine and I think that was the breaking point for a lot of people. It’s a great concept in theory, but execution needs a little more work.

I have to say that this is class act of a company. I found a coupon from a leading online deal vendor for their Perfect Pairing tour and called to find out available dates before buying. I bought the vouchers then called to make the reservation. A couple days before they called to say there was no such tour available on that day, but would work with us to make something happen on that date.
When we arrived in Temecula, the company’s tour coordinator invited us to try some local BBQ, then sent us off to another local winery for a wonderful tasting, we then were treated to some dessert at a local sweet shop. We were then informed that we could reuse the voucher at a later date for the mistake in the scheduling.
Please give these people your business, they are honest and a joy to work with. Visit their amazing deal at