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“I like wild ferments, and if I use any oak, it’s a very low toast,” says Will Wetmore, owner and winemaker at Veer Wine Project, as he outlined some of the techniques that give his wines such character. We were standing in his tasting room – a dark, cavernous space that looked like a sound stage with a brightly lit bar at its centre.
He poured me a glass of wine called Mataro: “It’s mourvrède, but it might have some syrah because I use syrah to top up barrels. It’s won lots of awards.”
I could understand why. With white pepper on the nose, dried cranberries in the mouth and a velvety body, this was a delicious, Rhône-style red. Yet, the river near the tasting room wasn’t the Rhône – it was the Boise. And that’s what is most astonishing about Wetmore’s wines: he grows and vinifies grapes in Idaho.
A landlocked US state wedged between Wyoming and Montana to the east and Washington and Oregon to the west, Idaho is known for white-water rafting, Sun Valley skiing, birds of prey and potatoes. And while it has not hitherto been celebrated for its wine, in four of the past five years, Idaho wines have beaten those from better-known wine regions such as Washington, Oregon and British Columbia at the Pacific Northwest’s Cascadia International Wine Competition. Veer Wine Project was the Cascadia winner in 2023 and 2024.
There are just 65 wineries in the state, but Idaho wine has doubled its economic impact in the past decade. It’s a $314m industry and veterans see a bright future for it. “We’ve only been figuring out who we are since the 1970s,” says Greg Koenig, co-owner of the intimate Devil’s Bedstead Winery, where his wife Kristen takes visitors through his single-vineyard, age-worthy Bordeaux blends. Koenig has been making wine in Idaho for over three decades. “When I first started, nobody from outside the state was looking at us. But the bones are here,” he says.
In the Snake River Valley, where he makes his wines, those bones include well-drained, volcanic soils; high-elevation vineyards with the long, hot growing days that ripen the grapes and the cool nights that help them retain their acidity; and in the last 10 years, new momentum and new facilities. “We’re growing rapidly. Word has gotten out,” he adds.
I became interested in Idaho’s promise while visiting Oregon. Shane Moore, winemaker at the Willamette Valley’s Gran Moraine, cut his teeth in Lewis-Clark Valley, the northernmost of Idaho’s three American Viticultural Areas, or AVAs (the other two are Snake River Valley and the Eagle Foothills). The wines of his home state, he told me, “possess an intensity and vibrancy of form that somewhat reminds me of a love child between the Rhône and the Mosel.”
I was keen to taste them for myself, and at Veer Wine Project I also sampled a blossomy, racy riesling that showed the classic petrol aroma of a well-aged mosel wine.
I had stopped into Veer while exploring Garden City. Adjacent to Idaho’s state capital, Boise, Garden City is a trendy up-and-coming area that boasts independent bookstores, esoteric boutiques, an engineered wave on the Boise River that locals surf on, and several tasting rooms for wineries that have vineyards in the Snake River Valley and Eagle Foothills AVAs.
After Veer, I hopped across the street to Cinder Wines for a lively Friday happy hour in an airy space converted from a 100-year-old fruit-packing warehouse. Winemaker Melanie Krause crafts Cinder’s big yet bright tempranillo. As the tasting room staff pointed out, Spain’s Ribera del Duero – where tempranillo thrives – is on the same latitude and receives roughly the same amount of rain as the Snake River Valley.
Idahoans make many different wines here. I tasted everything from a well-structured malbec by the family-owned Huston Vineyards to a quaffable fizz vinified from Idaho huckleberries at Ste. Chappelle, one of the state’s two corporate-owned wineries.
“Idaho hasn’t found a specific grape to hang its hat on yet,” Kat McClaskey told me when I visited her at House of Wine, her welcoming shop and wine bar in downtown Boise. Although that suggests that the region hasn’t quite found its identity, it also “keeps things lively and interesting,” she says.
She poured me Krause’s lovely viognier, its luscious peach notes mingling with a judicious touch of oak. Another Rhône varietal that responds well to the terroir of the Snake River Valley, viognier is now coming to the fore in Idaho. At Scoria Vineyards, where fourth-generation farmer Sydney Nederend is winemaker, it’s wonderfully bright and floral. “We have this amazing site,” she told me. “My great grandfather purchased it in 1929, but a lot of it was unused as it was too sandy and rocky to be farmable. All that is great for grapes, though.”
Another Scoria asset is an extinct volcanic vent that rises in layers of many-coloured soils, which provides a dramatic backdrop for the winery’s farm dinners. If you book a day with Snake River Wine Tours, you’ll ride right through it on your way to the tasting room. You’ll also taste a brambly cabernet in the barrel room at Koenig Vineyards, a Tuscan-style estate that Scoria’s Nederend and her husband James purchased from Greg Koenig in 2019.
Starting this summer, the tour will stop at Gem 73, the newest winery in Sunnyslope in the Snake River Valley, where you’ll sip wines in a glass-enclosed tasting room cantilevered above the vineyard on a 1,300m-high ridge with southern views of the valley and the Owyhee Mountains.
What you are unlikely to do is stay in the Snake River Valley, as the American Viticultural Area (AVA) doesn’t yet have appropriate accommodation. It does, however, have some wonderful places to eat, including Peaceful Belly Farm, where I attended a dinner on my last night in Idaho.
After farmers Clay and Josie Erskine had given us a tour around the pick-your-own flower patch, the sheep barn, the community pollinator and tasting-room gardens, we sat down to a communal al fresco dinner, with Josie offering wine pairings. It was a friendly evening, with none of the formality you might find in more established regions.
“99 per cent of Idaho wineries are tiny operations. The families are running their own tasting rooms; you can talk to the winemakers. That’s Idaho’s strong point. It’s fun being on this pioneering end,” Koenig had told me. “I mean, California chardonnay is lovely, but it’s not a discovery. Wine here is a real discovery.”
Essentials
Fly to Boise, Idaho via Seattle with British Airways or Delta. From there, pick up a hire car to explore Boise, Garden City and the Snake River Valley.
The Avery in Boise is an elegant, art deco grande dame with a jazz-age tavern. Doubles from £133.
The Modern Hotel is a creative, contemporary, good-value option in downtown’s buzzy Linen District. Doubles from £121.
Tasting flights in Idaho cost from around $8 (£6), with bottles from $22 (£16.50) – a fraction of Napa Valley prices. Reservations are recommended for tastings at all wineries.
Snake River Wine Tours offers public and private tours around the region’s wineries from $99 (£74) for three tastings.
Peaceful Belly Farm is open Fri–Sun, and they hold regular outdoor farm-to-fork dinners.
