Eagle Foothills American Viticultrual

I'm Susan Allen and it's Vine to Wine Wednesday on the Fruit Grower Report and we are taking a trip to Idaho. The Idaho wine community gained an important new designation with the approval of the Eagle Foothills American Viticultural Area (AVA). An AVA is a federally designated wine grape-growing region distinguishable by distinct geographic features such as climate, soil, elevation and physical features. Conditions and grapes grown within this geographic region cannot be replicated. The new designation will have a huge economic impact on Idaho and its wine industry an Aginfo reporter talked with Executive Dir. of the Idaho Wine commission, Moya Shatz Dolsby.

I thought the state director should takes credit for this but Moya is pretty darn humble.

SHATZ DOLSBY:"Martha Cunningham is co-owner of 3 Horse Ranch Vineyards in Eagle, Idaho. With the announcement that the Eagle Foothills American Viticultural Area (AVA) has been approved she said "Establishing the Eagle Foothills AVA will help further position Idaho as a developing wine region and hopefully attract growers, wineries, tourism and jobs," Cunningham made the original push to identify and authenticate the new Viticultural area with the hope that others will follow and carve their AVAs out of the Snake River Valley.

The new area encompasses nearly 50,000 acres of land north of Eagle, near Boise. Nearly 70 vineyard acres are planted with plans for more than 450 acres to be planted in the near future.

Idaho started gaining national attention and traction as a grape growing region when the Snake River Valley AVA was established in 2007. Idaho's vineyard elevations (ranging up to 3,000 feet) are higher than most others in the Northwest and soils are comprised primarily of volcanic-ash.