CALDWELL, Idaho — Jay Hawkins liked what he saw.

Peering into the 10-foot-deep pits he and his crew had dug in his new 32-acre vineyard, he saw just what he was looking for.

“There was sandy soil all the way to about the 10-foot level,” said Hawkins, owner-operator of Lanae Ridge Vineyard. “We had no restrictive layers.”

Also, he said, “we were digging up roots from vines we had taken out. Those old vines demonstrated they could grow very deeply.”

With that in mind, he will plant red grape varietals on the sloped site near the Snake River in southwest Idaho. They will replace the white winegrapes that had grown there nearly 43 years.

Hawkins took soil samples there and on the adjacent 33 acres he and his wife, Shelly, have owned since 2015. The latest purchase will nearly double their acreage and production of grapes.

Jay Hawkins is part of a succession of Idaho vineyard growers who have helped build a wine industry in a state known more for potatoes than Pinot.

“Those original farmers endured the learning curve, and we’re all benefiting from their lessons learned,” he said.

The Idaho wine industry is rapidly expanding. The state has 69 wineries, up from 11 in 2002, said Moya Shatz Dolsby, executive director of the Idaho Wine Commission.

Although the California, Washington and Oregon wine industries are far bigger, “there is huge interest now in the Idaho wine industry,” she said. “I am getting a lot of phone calls from people wanting to come in.”

Grape supply is one challenge for Idaho. The state currently has about 1,300 acres of grapes, the Wine Commission reports. While that’s up 40% from 2002, it hasn’t kept up with demand from wineries.

“We need more grapes in the ground because the wineries are growing,” Dolsby said. Residents want to drink locally sourced wine, “but there are not enough grapes to sustain the wineries, so the wineries are having to go to Washington” to supplement their supply.

Heather Bradshaw, the Washington State Wine Commission’s communications director, said that state now has more than 60,000 acres of vineyards.

High quality

Though their numbers are small, Idaho winemakers have big goals.

Gregg Alger of Huston Vineyards in southwest Idaho said the state is producing “world-class” wines and “can compete on a world level.”

He said the industry is benefiting as much from its commitment to quality as from the state’s population gains — the populace is up 17.3% in the past decade.

“You could have all the people in the world come. If your wine is not world-class, they are not going to buy it,” he said.

Martin Fujishin of Fujishin Family Cellars and Free Dog Winery said more grapes are being planted, “and some of the old vineyards are now being repurposed into newer varieties, which is really helping to propel the industry forward.”

A shift from white varieties to red is “driven by consumer demand for new and more well-suited varieties for our region than what we had seen previously,” he said.

Hawkins said of his just-added site: “In 1978, when they put that vineyard in, the thought probably was that the Idaho climate was better for white, with a bit shorter growing season” compared to some other regions.

“We have proven with our vineyard next to it that this is ideal” for reds, he said.

Ron Bitner of Bitner Vineyards grows 14.5 acres of his own grapes and 45 acres for another owner. He has done some replanting and white-to-red shifting at both sites in the Caldwell-Marsing area, though more than half his client’s ground remains in white grapes.

White grapes drove much of the growth of Ste. Chapelle into Idaho’s largest winery. The Symms family sold it in the late 1990s.

“Dad had been to Germany,” Dar Symms said of his father, Dick Symms, who died a year ago. “He really felt we could make great white wines here. … He thought ours was a similar climate to parts of the Rhine in Germany, where they grew great Johannisburg Rieslings.”

Ste. Chapelle’s 1978 building near Marsing was designed to produce 10,000 cases, “and by the early 1980s, we were at 100,000,” prompting an expansion, Dar Symms said.

In 2012, Seattle-based Precept Wine acquired Ste. Chapelle from Ascentia Wine Estates of Healdsburg, Calif. Ste. Chapelle says on its website that its annual production capacity is now 150,000 cases.

In 2010, Precept acquired the Corus Estates & Vineyards brands including the Sawtooth Winery in Nampa, the state’s second-largest winery.

The Baty family owns Winemakers LLC, Precept, and the Sawtooth and Skyline vineyards. The vineyards, both in Nampa, are 400 acres combined and are the major suppliers to Ste. Chapelle, Sawtooth and many other Idaho wineries, viticulturist and vineyard manager Jake Cragin said.

“The general trend of the industry in Idaho is that we’re not seeing whites taken out — but as new vineyards go in and new acreage is planted, people are putting in reds,” Cragin said. His team plans to add some red grapes in 2022 and “a lot” of new acres of whites in 2023, he said. “We are seeing a need for some more whites.”

Melanie Krause, winemaker and co-owner at Cinder Winery in Garden City, said she sees a trend toward “planting new acres with new or relatively new varieties for the Snake River Valley, plus a lot of the old classics.”

“We are starting to see those plantings come to fruition,” she said. “We are particularly excited about the potential of wines getting even better over the next few years.”

Seeing red

Other growers continue to see red — grapes, that is.

James and Sydney Nederend own Scoria Vineyards and Koenig Vineyards in southwest Idaho.

“Our vines at both locations are thriving, and we will remain as red-focused brands,” James Nederend said.

At Scoria this year, they added 6 acres of Syrah, 1.5 acres of Mourvèdre and a half-acre of Grenache, all reds. White grapes “wouldn’t fare well in our sandy, rocky soil and warm vineyard site,” James said.

They have not added vineyard acres at Koenig, where “we are continuing to focus on our core offerings of Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon while increasing production of Italian varieties like Nebbiolo from the exceptional Lanae Ridge Vineyard,” he said. All are reds.

Williamson Orchards & Vineyards in 2018 increased planted acres from 55 to 70. Co-owner and vineyard manager Mike Williamson said plantings typically do not produce the first year.

“In the second year, you can get some production sometimes, depending on how the plants do,” he said. “In years three and four, you are getting close to full production.”

Good conditions

IWC says grapes benefit from Idaho’s hot days and cool nights that balance acids and sugars, limited rain, and cold winters that promote gradual dormancy while limiting pest and disease pressure.

Bitner, a longtime grape grower, has one of 22 vineyard-sited weather stations in Idaho. The Boise State University-led project started about six years ago. Stations track wind, sunlight, rainfall, temperature and barometric pressure as well as soil moisture and temperature.

Stations track differences in daily high and low temperatures, and their accumulated growing-degree days.

“And with this information, the models can help predict pest hatches of different kinds,” Bitner said.

The system helps current and prospective grape growers track a site’s seasonal weather patterns to optimize farming decisions.

Hawkins, who is retired from Boise’s technology sector, said the wine industry is benefiting from the high-tech weather stations.

“If there was concern our growing season was not long enough, we’ve kind of dispelled that now,” he said.

For example, Hawkins said, if growers had access to similar weather stations in past decades, more of them may have planted red grapes rather than earlier-maturing whites.