stone faces winery

I'm not terribly knowledgeable about wines, but I had a wonderful time at Stone Faces Winery. John, our wine guide, was incredibly friendly and knowledgeable about the winery's offerings, and he took the time to answer all of my questions, and to direct me to wines that would best suite my palate for a tasting (4 tasting pours are complimentary). He also didn't blink when my wife and I shared our tasting pours, thus expanding our tasting palette from 4 to 8 wines (most of the offerings). I ended up finding a new favorite wine at Stone Faces, and found an interesting local cheese to try along with my new wine. My wife and I had a wonderful time, and would recommend this as a stop in the Black Hills area.

Reading the terrible and poor reviews I'm left wondering how people can visit places without checking them out ahead of time. Of course many of the grapes are not grown in South Dakota -- it's not really a wine grape-friendly climate. However, the grapes for the sweeter wines are grown in the southeastern part of the state. Why should anyone be offended that the winery has a tasting room across the state? Makes business sense to me that a business would put its point-of-sale building where the people are. I've seen it in other states, including California, so no one should get his boxers in a bunch over this. Anyway, our experience: the "cashier" and the tasting guy (I doubt he was a sommelier) were friendly, but the small selection of wines were not to my taste. The few dry wines were very dry -- if that's what rings your bells, then great. I found a couple off-dry wines to purchase, but the rest of the selections were very sweet, and while I can enjoy sweet wines, I didn't feel like adding these to my cellar.

Stopped off at Stone Faces winery and tried a flight. Honestly, the wine wasn't that great. A few decent flavors (especially among the whites) but overall a little disappointing. That said, the staff was awesome. Really friendly and gave a great experience. Worth stopping in just to talk to these guys for a few minutes.

Great staff, well rounded wine selection. Their dry reds were delicious, everything they should be. They also have a distillery that makes some phenomenal liquors. If you have a chance, GO! Truely a diamond in the rough!

Stopped in here spur of the moment. Had fun tasting the wine - enjoyed chatting with Maggie especially. Bought a few bottles & went hope happy.

Last time I was here I did not stop but, fortunately I DID this time. I see some negative reviews but I don't really understand why. Their prices were the same as Prairie Berry and probably cheaper than the Naked Winery. I preferred their Full Throttle wine and Buck Naked to any other wines I had in SD. It is small but the service was very good. In answer to the people who stated that their ingredients came from out of state you should really ask the servers about that. Each State has different regulations on how much of the product needs to be grown locally. I believe the Naked Winery gets their wine entirely from out of state. A lot of wineries in this part of the nation have to rely on portions from other states. That is a common practice. I've been to wineries from Washington to Boston and I grew up in California. The wine at Stone Faces was on par with some of the best I have had.

Stone Faces is definitely better than its neighbor, Naked Winery, but doesn't come close to matching Prairie Berry. The service is excellent at Stone Faces, however. It's a free tasting which is good for those of us on a budget and nothing about the place was bad. Wines tasted pretty good overall and the prices for a bottle were fair. It's conveniently located and the atmosphere is good.

While traveling in South Dakota we visited a couple of wineries. Who knew that South Dakota made such great wines? Stone Faces had a nice selection of wines to taste and we enjoyed the young lady who entertained us during the tasting! We purchased a few bottles and even shipped some home to enjoy later! We loved the Sturgis themed bottles of Merlot!!

My daughter and I loved this experience. South Dakota wine and a woman who was friendly, knew what she was talking about and had a sense of humor! We couldn't ask for more. Wine is very good and reasonably priced. Would definitely go to this winery again.

South Dakota wines and a nice stop. Has a small gift shop but If you like wine or want to do something different go ahead and try. The wines are good and its a small shop. The tastings are free and the staff is friendly. I thought the tastings were small but it was free. We ended up buying a bottle of wine as a souvenir of our visit.

Love the name (Mt Rushmore stone carved president faces) but would not go again. It was small, and the "winery experience" was not there. The tasting was free but the wine did not deliver, especially for the price.

If vintners are going to do the hard work of making wine in South Dakota, I'm going to honor their hard work through the fun of tasting it. That's how my hubby and I ended up in Stone Faces' hip, friendly (and loud) tasting room when we were visiting the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore. We'd go back and drink their wines again if we were in the area.THE FACILITYNewish and medium sized, they weren't serving food (as Prairie Berry Winery up the road does) at the time of our visit although it appears that may be in future plans. Friendly and hip interior design but the almost dance club loud music was distracting. That's the one thing I'd change here. Then again, maybe that is just a more mature (aka aging), oneophile (aka wino) perspective. Otherwise, there was a great vibe and energy among the staff in this room.Wines are not made at this facility, but at the winery on the other side of the state in Vermillion. Given it makes sense to put the tasting rooms where the tourist traffic is, this Hill City location is a great one to capture the tourists on Mt. Rushmore and Custer State Park trips. And appropriate to do given this IS a South Dakota winery. THE TASTING SET UPTasting had no fee as I recall and we could choose a certain number of tastes from a list of roughly five (dry to medium) reds and eight (off dry to sweet) whites. On the day of our visit, our tasting experience was all the more fun because a relative, nephew I think, of the owner poured for us. This delightful guy was knowledgeable not only about his family's wines but wine making in general. He made our hour in the tasting room well worth the time. THE WINESAs with tasting rooms for three other South Dakota wineries we visited, we found many fruit other than grape based wines here and a few that were from wine grapes. Between my husband and me, we were able to taste most of the wines on the list. We suspended for the time we were in South Dakota our "wine snob" orientation and found we enjoyed several wines we tasted in South Dakota, including several here, and leaned more to liking the fruit wines than the grape varietal wines. In particular we enjoyed "Tickle Me" rhubarb wine, which was amazingly off dry in character in spite of 7% RS due to the nice acid balance from the fruit, and my hubby appreciated the Artisan red which was a blend of Cabernet grapes (from CA?) and a South Dakota grown varietal. The winery has some whimsy in wine naming, like Full Throttle (red) with a nod to the motor cyclists that take over the area at the Sturgis rally each year. Labels follow the whimsy of the names. As in the Tickle Me rhubarb which has a childhood photo of the owner along with snippets of his report card on the label.One of the happiest surprises in all of our South Dakota wine tasting was sampling a wine made by Stone Faces from the wild grape varietal Vitis Reparia for which they actually harvested grapes in the wild. No longer making this wine given the cost to do it and the price point they need to charge for a bottle (as I recall around $50), the tasting room host opened a bottle for us to try. We liked it a lot and had the price point been 15% lower, we would have bought a bottle or even two to travel with us. I've since learned that Vitis Reparia is the wild root stock that Vitis Vinifera was grafted to for much of American wine making. So that makes it doubly fun, after the fact, to have tasted wine made from the wild grapes.Bottle prices ran from as little as roughly $13 to as much as about $30 with only one more than that, in the $50 range. We walked away with a couple of bottles. THIS N THAT1) ACCESSIBILITY: Newish building, it is level in the entry and all on one floor in the tasting room. However, an inexplicable fail is that although this is a new parking lot as well, they have no designated accessible - aka ADA van accessible - parking as has been required by both Federal rules and SD State Codes for almost 23 years. Stone Faces needs to fix this error.2) SUMMER HOURS: Mon - Sat: 10a - 8p. Sun: 10a - 6p.3) ANOTHER ONE TO VISIT: If you have time for only one wine tasting experience in this area, choose Prairie Berry Winery just up the road. But if you can fit in two, then Stone Faces is definitely worth the stop.4) ONE TO AVOID: Oregon vintner Naked established a tasting room nearby. Irksome. Who wants to drink vino from a (marginal) OR winery when in SD? Apparently tourists who are entertained by the "tee hee" double entendre of wine names like "Orgasmic" and "Foreplay" and "Dominatrix" and...well, you get the bad idea. If the wine were better either they would not need this schtick or I could overlook it.

1st and last stop for both of us. A plethora of Sturgis Rally named wines. Woo hoo. All the wines are supposedly made in Vermillion, SD (Eastern SD), and who knows where the grapes and berries come from- not SD. We did sample and neither of us were impressed. Flavors very heavy and what I'd call rough. And I'm not a wine guy, but the GF is a wine gal ;-) Tasting staff lady was professional & pleasant. Bought a T-shirt for GF at the checkout and was surprised that the touchscreen register had a suggested tip for purchasing a product, not a service!?# Kinda soured the wine the rest of the way for me.

I absolutely loved the wine tasting experience I had here. The ladies were incredibly sweet and knowledgeable. The wines were fabulous and the little gift shop was cute. Definitely worth a half hour of your time to stop and taste some awesome wine.

We really enjoyed our stop here. Very nice building and the staff were very smiley, friendly and knowledgeable. Most of the wines are actually from back in Vermilion. We really liked the wines. They were surprising good. The labels and names were neat...most were linked to the area thru the Sturgis rally, Mt Rushmore etc. Was a fun break!