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
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?
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!
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
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
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
Hip and Anne Delgado have been volunteering in the vineyard for Williamson’s since 2020 brix testing. Whether testing brix or powering through cluster counting in the spring, they have been amazing vineyard warriors!
Both Hip and Anne come from a rural background, with Hip being raised in plum and apricot orchards and Ann enjoying her summers at her great grandfather’s farm in Michigan. When they moved to the Sunnyslope, they planted a couple grape vines on their property and wanted to learn more about vineyards.
They love big bold reds and think the Williamson Vineyards 2018 Cabernet is the perfect compliment to their favorite farm to table offerings. Anne says “It’s been a pleasure to serve our community, get to know the Williamsons and learn more about vineyard living.”
Thanks so much, Hip & Anne!
The Idaho Wine Commission wrote an intriguing piece on smoke in Idaho vineyards for their blog. They sat down with Mike Williamson to find out about how smoke can be helpful and detrimental for Idaho grape growers. Read it here: Are Idaho grapes going up in smoke?
The Idaho Capital Sun wrote an interesting article about climate change and the apparent effects it may have on Idaho’s vineyards. They talked with a couple of Sunnyslope grape growers and an adjunct research scientist at Columbia University who studies drought and it’s effects on plants.
“As far as agriculture and climate change goes, wine is kind of the canary in the coalmine,” Benjamin Cook of Columbia University said. “It’s a perennial crop that sticks around every year, and it’s so sensitive to what’s happening with weather and the environment.”
Mike Williamson spoke to them about the importance of water conservation using drip irrigation, “We get better quality when we’re more water conscious, the fruit has better flavors, and you can get better colors,” Williamson said. “The trees and vines are both better balanced, and you get more intense flavors.”
Head on over to the fascinating article here: ‘Canary in the coalmine’: Climate change becoming big factor for Idaho winemakers
Brad Carlson of the Capital Press headed out to the Sunnyslope region to talk with grape growers about how the vineyard plantings have been increasing in acreage. Even with production steadily increasing since the 1990’s, Idaho still experiences more demand for Idaho grown grapes than supply. See what different growers had to say about the increasing quantity and quality of Idaho grapes.
Read the full article here: Way to Grow, Idaho wine industry