Row of 5 wine bottles of Williamson Vineyards 2021 Sangiovese in front of a weathered grey wood wall

February – Featured Wine of the Month

This versatile wine is the perfect wine to start out February!
Dark bottle of 2021 Williamson Vineyards with vintage phone to the side and mirror on the wall behind the wine
The February #WineOfTheMonth is our 2021 Sangiovese!

This balanced, medium-bodied red has brick red tones with garnet highlights. Notice an aroma that hints of earthy cedar, mellow violets, and tart fruit. Flavors of cranberry, currants, and cedar hit the tongue almost instantly while fennel and cherry pit evolve mid-palate and the whole thing finishes with a touch of tobacco and pepper.

Food Pairing: The bright acids combined with savory flavors in this wine make it so easy to pair with a variety of styles of food. You could pour this with any tomato based pasta, grilled meats and veggies seasoned with basil, parsley, marjoram or thyme. Elevate your classic hamburger or get creative with chicken and cream sauce. Go simple with an aged Parmesan, medium cheddar or get a little wild with a fontina cheese

Enjoy a 10% stack-able discount on 2021 Sangiovese between February 5 thru 28, maximum 5 bottles.
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Idaho Wines on a Global Stage

Alder Yarrow, a blogger and columnist who writes for JancisRobinson.com  visited Idaho and tasted thru many of the wineries and wines in Idaho and in particular the Sunnyslope area. He viewed his visit in as a fact finding trip caused in part by an earlier taste of Idaho wine and was intrigued enough to find out more. He was honest in his critique, but very encouraging regarding Idaho wines and our growing region.    We’ve got the full article on a PDF that you can access here: Checking_in_on_Idaho

 

Farmers In It For The Long Haul

Williamsons Orchards & Vineyards has been growing a variety of crops for 4 generations and we’ve seen first hand the importance of stewardship on agricultural land. When we started grape growing in the late 1990’s, we came to realize that growing grapes is capital intensive, and risky. Unlike row crops which can be rotated each year, planting a grape vine is a commitment to the future.
It’s an agricultural gamble fueled by passion. Because our family is focused on taking the best care possible of the agricultural land entrusted to us, we do our best to focus on the sustainability and environmental best practices as well as the economic and social responsibility aspects of a family business.


ripe red wine grapes on the vine

How Many Grapes In A Bottle Of Wine?

close up bottle pouring wine into glassFUN FACT!!
Did you know that it takes 600-800 grapes to make a bottle of wine?
Wine grapes can vary from about 50-100 grapes per cluster. It could take anywhere from 8 to 12 grapes clusters per bottle. Each variety of wine grape can hold anywhere from 30 to 50 clusters, depending on what a winemaker requires.
Thus, the winemaker and the wine grower are entwined in their efforts for the grapes to reach their maximum potential for the wine produced.
We believe that wine is defined by its “terroir” (the characteristic taste and flavor imparted to a wine by the environment in which it is produced) and shaped by the decisions of both the grape growers and winemakers!

Salt Lake Magazine visits Southwestern Idaho

Salt Lake Magazine visited here on the Sunnyslope and looked into the Sunnyslope Wine Trail and the AgVenture Trail. They had great things to say about Southwest Idaho and you can find their article as a PDF here – Follow-The-Trail-MagazineArticle

Emerging American Wine Regions and climate challenges – VinePair

A freelance writer named Shana Clark spoke with Beverly, Patrick, and Mike about what grows well in the Snake River Valley AVA. She then wrote an article for VinePair, an online wine magazine. Her article touched on how terroir can affect the grapes grown in a particular region. She spoke with several wine makers in the Snake River Valley AVA and winemakers in Arizona about the challenges of climate and grape varieties.  You can read the full article here: For Emerging American Wine Regions, Can Trends Trump Terroir?

 

 

2023 Harvest Wrap up

grapes on grapevines with yellow leaves, backlight by sunlight

With roughly 310 tons of grapes, this was our largest grape harvest ever to date!! We experienced a compressed harvest, meaning that there was a lot of grapes to harvest and everything became ripe and ready to pick, basically at the same time. This compressed harvest was caused by a cool, wet spring that delayed bud break by 10 – 14 days. The vineyards were delayed again when we had 20 days of temperatures over 100°, causing the vines to go into “survival mode” versus expending energy to ripen.

This year also marks the latest start date to harvest on our records. Luckily, the weather held through the end of October. We didn’t feel a killing frost until end of October but this was late enough and it stayed cold enough that it helped to dehydrate the grapes and concentrate the sugars in the grape berries.

Since everything was ready to pick all at once, we ended up machine picking all our white grapes, something we have never done before. We are excited to see how this will translate into the glass. Especially the Grüner Veltliner, which will hopefully be ready to bottle by June or July of 2023. We will also be patiently waiting to see how a few red grapes will do. The 2022 vintage will be a first for our Petite Verdot and Tempranillo, but we will have to patiently wait until spring or summer of 2024 for these wines.

Cheers and Happy Sipping!

Women in Wine article with Beverly

Beverly had the opportunity to visit with Paige Comrie this summer. Paige is a wine lover with a passion to connect other wine lovers with great wines from across the world. She choses wines that range from delicious & affordable Tuesday night picks to high-end limited edition releases that are truly something to celebrate. She wants to share not just the wines with her followers but the stories of the folks that make those wines.

Find the entire article here: Women in Wine: Beverly Williamson

Grapevines Sleeping Sweetly

Harvest is over and the weather has been cooperative so that our vines have safely gone to sleep, to rest and get ready for the next growing season. Our vineyard guys have been busy getting all the harvest paraphernalia put away for another year.

While the leaves where still green on our vines this fall, they where sending valuable carbohydrates into the woody trunk and roots as fuel to get the vines through the quiet winter months. This reserve is essential to keep the vines fed until they wake from their winter sleep and send leaves out to allow photosynthesis to generate the spring growth to begin another year.

Sleep well, little vines and we’ll see you mid-winter for a bit of trimming.

Vineyard Update – November 2021

Vineyard Update

In the vineyards, we have our crews working to prep the vineyards for winter. This means planting our cover crop, taking down any bird nets left from harvest, and checking (and if necessary) repairing the trellis wire to be ready for the pre-pruning machine in January. Plus any other last minute cleanup that we need to finish before the snow flies.

Our crews have worked hard this year, putting in long hours to get all the work done before the freezing temps move in to put the vines to sleep for another year.

Cheers!

Mike & Patrick Williamson
The Vineyard Guys