SOUP CONTEST WINNERS!

Soups Galore!

We have hosted a soup contest at our Fall Barrel Tasting Weekend event for years. Each year event attendees take on the great responsibility of tasting and voting on their favorite soups. If you didn’t get a chance to submit or sip this year, we hope you remember to join us next year at our Fall Barrel Tasting Weekend! This year we made soup contest history! Not only did we have a record number of folks submitting soups for judging, but we had our first ever tie! Read below to learn a little more about our newest soup savants.

FRIDAY

Julia Figgins
Buffalo Chicken Chili
Julia Figgins created a crowd pleasing Buffalo Chicken Chili with all the fixins’. The fan favorite was to pair her spicy chili with our 2020 Malbec, because the fruity flavors in our wine played nice with the spice in the chili.Unfortunately, we aren’t able to share a recipe for this soup because Julia “shoots from the hip” and makes it up as she goes. 
Sarah Heasley
Polska Kielbasa Soup
Sarah Heasley created a spicy Polska Kielbasa Soup that really got our taste buds buzzing! If you make this delicious dish, we recommend pairing it with the 2020 Henry’s Red, because the smoky flavors in the wine brought out the smoky flavors in the soup.For a printable copy: Polska Kielbasa Sausage Soup

SATURDAY

Cherie Holsclaw
Seafood Chowder
Cherie created a Seafood Chowder that simply blew away the competition!This creamy dish of comfort paired nicely with the 2022 Albariño, the crisp citrus of the wine is a good juxtaposition to the creamy richness of the chowder.  Mmm mmm good!Cherie is also an intuitive chef and does not cook from a recipe. But she did share a few notes about how she creates her soup. Seafood Chowder

We want to take a moment to say a great big thank you to all the contestants who participated in our soup contest. THANK YOU! 

Other soup submissions recipes available to download here:
Tortellini Soup – Lisa LaBarbera
Roasted Butternut Squash Soup – Billie Farley

 

2020 Sangiovese takes Platinum!

Sip Magazine has hosted their 12th annual Best of Northwest wine competition. They place an open call for submissions put out to wineries of all sizes across the Pacific Northwest with an impressive 665 wines sent in this year. These submissions underwent blind tastings, meticulously evaluated by a distinguished panel of judges comprised of sommeliers, wine buyers, journalists and industry professionals. The top four medalists (platinum, double gold, gold, and silver) and Judges’ picks were selected for each respective wine category.Bottle of Sangiovese wine with glasses behind

We’re proud to announce that Williamson Vineyards 2020 Sangiovese received the highest award for a Sangiovese this year. Full article can be found here: Sip Magazine BEST OF THE NORTHWEST WINE AWARDS

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

Winner of the Open That Bottle Contest

Begun in 1998, Open That Bottle Night is a call to open that special bottle with friends and share the experience, instead of letting it continue to sit in the cellar. We’ve decided to get into the spirit by holding a drawing from participants who submitted pictures of their Williamson wines and a short description as to why they decided to Open That Bottle. We received some lovely entries and we put the names into a wine spittoon and drew out the winner,
…Lisa Shaffer!

Lisa wins the wine-rrific gift basket, valued at $140.

Congratulation Lisa! Thank you for this fabulous picture, you can pick up your gift basket prize at the tasting room at your convenience.
Lisa had this to say about her favorite bottle: “We love this bottle of Last Drop and opened it because it is unique and we know they won’t be able to ever make it again the same. Terry and I really enjoyed it and it pairs well with lasagna!  It rates best in a Williamson glass.”

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We were blown away by everyone who entered the contest. Many of the entries truly touched our hearts. We would like to gift a bottle of our delicious 2020 Dry Rosé to our honorable mentions seen below. Cheers!


Richard & Trudy Jackson
Stacy Irwin

Renee & Steve VanAtter
Margie & David Wilkins


Multi-colored background with the words, Staff Member Spotlight

Saying Goodbye to Steve

Our wine club members and regulars might recognize this dapper fellow. Steve Steidel has been a fixture in our tasting room and the friendly face behind our local deliveries for 5 years.
February 23rd marked his last day with Williamson Orchards and Vineyards and we are all going to miss him. While no one will be able to tell “dad jokes” quite like Steve, we wish him all the best on this next chapter of life.
Steve has big plans to travel more and play a lot more golf in his retirement. One of his bucket list items was to work at a golf course in retirement. So if you see this funny fellow out on the greens be sure to give him a “cheers” from us.

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?

 

 

Mom’s Weekend at Williamson’s- Vendors Wanted

May 13 & 14
12 – 5pm

We are looking for local artists, makers, and crafters who would like to set up a booth during our Mom’s Weekend at Williamson’s event. Due to limited space and to ensure diversity in wares, this is a juried craft show. All arts and crafts sold at the Mom’s Weekend at Williamson’s must be an individual’s creative effort and sold by the artist or a representative thereof. Preference will be given to vendors who can attend both days.

More information can be found on our vendor application, which can be found here: Vendor Application 2023 – Mother’s Day online form   Please email us at wine@willorch.com if you want more information or have questions.

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

Wine Club Member Spotlight

Williamson Vineyards is thankful for the loyal support of our wine club! This next year we are going to share a little about a few of our most supportive members. We can’t do what we do without our amazing wine club ambassadors. Cheers!

Two of our most amazing wine club ambassadors ever, are Karen Bowles and Susan Daly! This sweet set of sisters have been members of our wine club for 9-10 years! Karen and Susan host a wine gathering every year, often featuring an Idaho winery. These classy ladies don’t just throw any wine soirée! They turn it into a fun and educational gathering with different themes, where they share some of their favorite wines with their friends.

Susan told us some fun facts: ” I put the wines in groups on my dining room table to include the reds, red blends, dry whites, sweets, verticals. In the middle of the table I made a copy of the importance of the windmill that was on the back of one of your wine labels, I purchased a mini steel windmill, and a copy of the Williamson logo”, “We had 3 vertical tastings. The 2018 and 2019 Riesling. The 2018 and 2019 windmill red. I think, the 3rd vertical was the 2018 and the 2019 Malbec”

These amazing wine club members have obviously been planning this for a while, and we were honored to find out that their latest epic wine party featured all Williamson Vineyards wines!! Thank you Karen and Susan for making Williamson’s wines a part of your annual tradition.

*We would have loved a picture of them together, but one of our ladies was always taking pictures!