The New Napa Valley?

Marketing wine works fine for southwest Idaho vintners, but will work better as word spreads about the area’s new nationwide designation.

“The name Snake River Valley gives us that distinction,” said Neil Glancey, winemaker and general manager at Carmela Vineyards near Glenns Ferry.

Carmela Vineyards has won national awards for its wines. Some people at the competitions would express surprise when they find out the wine was grown in Idaho, Glancey said.

“It gives you distinction to put that appellation on the bottle,” he said. An appellation is a grape-growing region.

In March, a bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department named the Snake River Valley of southern Idaho and eastern Oregon an American Viticultural Area. The U.S. now has 236 such areas, a third of which are in California.

Marketing-wise, designation as an American Viticultural Area provides a boost, Glancey said. Oregon and Washington AVAs took advantage of their unique growing areas to set their wines apart, and in time to enable consumers to distinguish Northwest wines, he said. The wine industry there also established quality control standards.
Glancey said the designation will help to set Idaho apart. It also will create national recognition that the Snake River Valley is a grape-growing area that can yield great wines – helped by its elevation and volcanic soils.
Carmela Vineyards visitors include residents of the region as well as people traveling back and forth from Nevada, he said. Now, Carmela and other wineries can draw visitors from farther away, and the American Viticultural Area designation gives Idaho tourism officials a greater opportunity for nationwide marketing, he said.
At Ste. Chapelle Winery between Caldwell and Marsing, winemaker and General Manager Chuck Devlin says the national designation, and the recognition it brings, are significant.
The designation gives the grape-growing region a sense of place, he said.
“We have kind of a shared sense of the area, with the climate, soils and all of the things important to growing grapes and making wine, and we don’t have the baggage of political boundaries.”
Now, Snake River Valley winemakers can have a stronger and clearer voice when it comes to selling throughout the U.S. and beyond, as the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts, he said.
Wineries in the Sunny Slope area west of Caldwell already do some cooperative marketing to attract visitors, Devlin said. The designation figures to increase and broaden, he said.
“We have a lot of shoulders to the wheel,” he said.
A study of the Western Snake River Plain was key to the area’s new designation. Its authors are Virginia Gillerman of the Idaho Geological Survey at Boise State University, David Wilkins of the BSU Department of Geosciences, Krista Shellie of the U.S. Department of Agricultural Horticultural Research Lab in Parma, and Ron Bitner of Bitner Vineyards, Caldwell.
Idaho is associated with high mountains and cold temperatures, but southwest Idaho’s low elevation and relatively moderate climate make it suitable for growing European wine grapes, they wrote. Geological diversity in the area suggests that sub-regions of production could emerge, they wrote.
The Idaho Grape Growers and Wine Producers Commission says less than 1 percent of the region is planted with grapes, so growth and development opportunities remain strong.
The commission recently named Sherise Jones as director. Bitner held the post on an interim basis.
Jones was hired to promote the Idaho wine industry nationally, help boost sales, and advocate a proposed scenic byway through the Snake River canyon. Her 20 years in marketing include five promoting Idaho agricultural products.
“The overall vision of the Wine Commission is to really raise awareness and heighten the image of Idaho wines and how Idaho wine country is viewed regionally and nationally,” she said.
The Commission and aims to position the region as a new frontier in the U.S. wine industry, Jones said. The region includes more than 20 wineries, plus vineyards expected to develop into wineries, she said.
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To contact the author, e-mail brad.carlson@idahobusiness.net.