Idaho Has Good Wine- Snake River Winery

It has been a while since I wrote about visiting a winery, and honestly, I havent had the chance to visit the Snake River Winery in Idaho, but they have a tasting room in downtown Boise with friendly staff and free tastings. You know, once upon a time you could get free tastings at Virginia wineries, but that is becoming very rare. And rarest of all when you encounter free tastings for wines that are this good.

The Snake River Winery has a huge selection of wines, and it seems that it would be hard to do a lot of different wines well. But Snake River manages it okay. Their Chardonnays are good, and their Merlots are good too, but neither are spectacular. Wonderful wines for the prices, however. But they have 21 blends or bottles to choose from. I only had the chance to tast 5 of the wines.

I settled on the Zweigelt, an Austrian grape that seems to grow quite well in the higher elevations of Idaho. It is a dry wine, but very light bodied with soft tannins, and it is quite drinkable alone or paired with- in my case- Idaho Barbecue Spareribs. Absolutely delicious!

The vintner at the tasting room told me that Snake River sells a Spanish grape, the Barbera. The last time I had one of those, I was in Australia. He mentioned that the gift shop at the Boise airport still has a few bottles of the Barbera and I’m planning on taking that one home with me as I fly out.