Wineries, Wine Events and Children

I was catching up with some acquaintences about our various weekend activities and of course it 'tis the season for wine events. One of the topics of discussion that came up was how much more we are noticing the trend of parents bringing their children of varying ages to what you would rightly expect to be 'adult' environs.

Granted there are many family friendly oriented events that have a wine component like the VA Balloon and Wine Festival which is a really great family friendly event, but seeing parents with papooses and almost newborns strapped to their fronts with a wine in hand in a tasting room or a tasting tent is just weird, having children running around a tasting room is totally unaccpetable, and there is a certain amount of uncomfortableness to it - or maybe thats just my problem?

I can appreciate that parents want to 'have a life' after children, but I dont think its unreasonable to expect a 'tasting room' to be child-free. Tasting rooms and children dont mix very well, you have alcohol, glass, generally a lot of bric-a-brac, often a lot of people with elbows, to be bumped or trodden on disrupted and just generally annoyed at the distraction of the young'ns around is not fair to the majority (the adults).

Parents need to use some more common sense - there are some fab wineries that have an abundance of outdoor space, keep the children outside if you choose to bring them, enjoy that glass of wine, but please dont encroach on the sanctity of the 'tasting room'...there has to be some 'grown ups only' areas left somewhere!