A little more than ten years ago, an unsolicited case of wine showed up on my doorstep. That wasn’t particularly unusual, of course, but the place it came from managed to surprise me at the time.
Those first 12 tastes of Idaho wine proved quite enlightening. They told the story of a wine region early in its development, with a mix of hobbyists and more commercially focused producers all exploring the possibilities of a relatively new terroir.
Last month, I decided it was long past time for me to go check in on the region’s development, so I took the short flight up and spent a few days poking around the state’s main wine region as well as tasting as many wines as I could.
I found a region still exploring the possibilities, but definitely one more developed and mature in its winemaking. The wines are now consistently clean and almost always commercially viable, and some of them show real promise, provided the industry has the ambition to push things further.
Recent History
In the mid-1800s, Idaho was crisscrossed by emigrants making their way along the famed Oregon and Mormon Trails. This rugged homeland of the Shoshone tribe was not easy country to pass through, however, which may be why it took several decades before Idaho saw permanent European settlements. The discovery of gold in the 1860s accelerated things, but it took the establishment of the Utah & Northern Railway as well as the Union Pacific Railroad to really drive the creation of the first towns and see the development of the first serious agricultural efforts in the region.
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Source : https://www.vinography.com/2024/07/checking-in-on-idaho
