Rebekah Brown said... Phil was a great host/driver and very knowledgable about the surrounding area. The places we went were great stops for foodies.
We did feel that for the price we paid ($150 each), we expected more input from the stops and a bit more of a bespoke experience. E.g. at the cheese shop we were given three samples of cheese and a few crackers which we felt we could have bought ourselves and tried more varieties for a lot less money, but there was no additional information about the cheese-making process or particularly unusual cheeses available to try. It didn't feel much different to just walking off the street for free and taking the cheeses home to try ourselves.
At the chocolate shop we also could have just bought lots of different chocolate bars and tried them, and would have gotten a lot of more samples for the money we paid. Again, no offer of interaction with the chocolatiers to see how they make the chocolates, which we expected given the cost of the experience. But the choice of stop was excellent with beautiful chocolates and amazing variety of flavours.
The winery was also a lovely stop, but no different to walking in off the street, and because we bought wine, the tasting fees which we had paid for in the booking were waived anyway, unsure if this happened in the other two stops as we also bought produce from the other businesses.
The reason we have given our rating is that we felt the experience was a glorified taxi service and the value for money was poor.