Multi-colored background with the words, Staff Member Spotlight

Saying Goodbye to Steve

Our wine club members and regulars might recognize this dapper fellow. Steve Steidel has been a fixture in our tasting room and the friendly face behind our local deliveries for 5 years.
February 23rd marked his last day with Williamson Orchards and Vineyards and we are all going to miss him. While no one will be able to tell “dad jokes” quite like Steve, we wish him all the best on this next chapter of life.
Steve has big plans to travel more and play a lot more golf in his retirement. One of his bucket list items was to work at a golf course in retirement. So if you see this funny fellow out on the greens be sure to give him a “cheers” from us.

2023 Harvest Wrap up

grapes on grapevines with yellow leaves, backlight by sunlight

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!

Grapevines Sleeping Sweetly

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 – November 2021

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

Covid-19 Changes – What to expect at Williamson’s

From our family to yours

Dear Friends and Followers,

I don’t know about you but I could do with a glass of wine right about now!

This has been a trying few days, to say the least. Our family has been farming here in Idaho for generations and I can’t recall a time quite like this before. So I would like to start by saying from my family to yours, I hope you are staying safe, healthy and finding some mental well-being in all of this craziness.

Undoubtedly, you have heard about Covid-19 and have probably have an inbox full of emails like this, explaining how everyone is adapting. Mike, Patrick and myself have given extensive thought to how we can help do our part to stop the spread of this virus while still keeping our company viable. After some very tough deliberation we have decided to limit risk to our staff and clientele by suspending wine tasting for the foreseeable future. That being said the tasting room will remain open for bottle sales and wine club pick-up effective March 19th.

We are offering curbside pick up in an effort to limit contact while providing as much personal service to our customers as we can. In addition, we will begin implementing customer conveniences like online ordering & local delivery very soon.

We will be utilizing minimal staffing during our hours of operation, in another effort to practice social distancing until circumstances change. While we have always tried to maintain a clean establishment, we have already enhanced our cleaning and sterilizing procedures to protect staff and guests from potential spread of the virus.

Finally, I want to say thank you to all our supporters! Thank you for sticking with us and supporting us during this trying time. Remember that with every bottle you purchase you are supporting 14 Williamson family members, 10 amazing tasting room and office staff and 15 of the hardest working field crew. So, I speak for all of us at Williamson Orchards & Vineyards when I say a very heartfelt thank you to our wine club members and all our followers out there.

From my family to yours, thank you and be well!

Sincerely,
Beverly Williamson
Williamson Orchards & Vineyards
Owner & Director of Sales

Curbside Pick Up

We are encouraging our guests to call ahead and arrange for curb-side service. You can reach us by phone – 208.459.7333,  message us or via Facebook where will take your order and arrange a pick up time. When you arrive on site we ask that you call the tasting room (208.459.7333) to let staff know that you are outside and ready to receive your bottles of wine (or as I like to call them, little vessels of sanity). If you are already in our point of sale system we can process your order through your account or we can accept payment upon arrival. Just a bit of advice – credit cards require the least amount of contact but we can always accept cash.

Wine Club

We want to remind our members that we don’t have to let Covid-19 keep us from enjoying what makes us happy. In fact, our members can look forward to our next wine club release on April 3, 2020! We’ve planned a little something extra in your April release – Mixed and Red members will receive the newly released 2018 Syrah and it’s delicious!

Local Delivery

Starting in April we will be offering free local delivery to wine club members in response to our unprecedented circumstances. This includes delivery of the April (and past) wine club release as well as any additional wine purchases. Our delivery range includes Boise, Garden City, Star, Eagle, Meridian, Middleton, Caldwell, Nampa, Kuna, Homedale and Marsing. If you are outside of these towns, get ahold of us (208.459.7333 or message) and we’ll see what we can do. Please keep in mind that someone over 21 years of age must receive the wine.


Celebrating 110 Years Of Farming!

The Williamson Family is so proud to be celebrating a 110 years of family farming! Our family homesteaded on the sunny slopes of the Snake River Valley back in 1909. The Williamson family has always striven to be good stewards of the land and to adapt with the climate and the times. Over the next year we will share a few historical “snap shots” of life on the family farm.


Winter Recovery in the Snake River AVA

The Idaho Press Tribune has been continuing to cover the effects of the harsh winter of 2016-2017. Check out this article, featuring our very own Mike Williamson, talking about the recovery in our region from the harsh 2016-2017 winter. We’re happy to report that things are looking good after a regrowth year last summer! Click for the full article.

Event Ground Expansion

new lot

While there isn’t much to see on the new lot yet, you can see the back side of the tasting room as well as the event space and office.

We are coming up on our one year anniversary of moving into our beautiful new tasting room! We have truly enjoyed the new space and continue to make improvements. Once we were in the new space, we quickly realized is that we needed more lawn/garden space for outdoor events. So this summer we purchased the lot directly behind the tasting room and offices. We’re thrilled with the potential this 1.3 acre lot presents us and will start working on landscaping next spring.