Tyrrell’s Wines has apologised for the hour-long drink lines at Saturday’s Jazz in the Vines festival.
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The event’s wine supplier put out a statement on the Jazz in the Vines Facebook page on Sunday.
“Tyrrell's Wines would like to extend their most heartfelt apologies for the long drink queues experienced at the Jazz in the Vines festival,” the statement said.
“The crowd numbers were much more than previous years and we were significantly understaffed. The demand for our wines was far greater than anticipated.”
The apology was made after festival goers slammed organisation of the event on social media.
Complaints detailed the long drink queues and delays to get into the festival and out of the car park.
The festival was run by Hunter Valley event management company Sound Addiction.
Sound Addiction founder Grant Smith said the wait times for entry and exit to the festival were “acceptable”, but were made worse by the drink lines.
“When you compound one queue with another queue is when people get irate,” he said.
Mr Smith said he didn’t “want to bag” Tyrrell’s, but that the festival was let down by the one aspect his company couldn’t control.
He said the more than 7000 strong crowd was the biggest in about 10 years.
Attendees took to Facebook to express their disappointment, with some even requesting refunds.
“Ridiculous line to get in, at least 40 minutes… and 45 minutes and counting to buy a drink,” one posted on the Jazz in the Vines Facebook page.
“Absolute chook raffle. We left. Shouldn't have to wait 90 mins to get a drink. I want a bloody refund,” another added.
“Not only did we have to wait over an hour to get a drink but 90 minutes to get out of the car park,” one said.
Pokolbin’s Janine Matthews told Fairfax Media the festival was “disorganised right from the word go”.
She said there was no line to buy tickets, so the long queue to enter could have been ushered through the ticket purchasing area.
Upon entry, she said there was a lengthy wait for drinks straight away.
Mrs Matthews said she thought the large turnout should have been expected, with it being the last festival.
“It was just very poor, people had paid $100 for a ticket and you couldn’t even get a drink,” she said.
“They knew they were going to have those sorts of numbers, but they didn’t really cater for the crowd.”
