Aspiring and professional winos, entry-level and expert foodies: If you weren’t at Savor Idaho last Sunday you missed out! Although, tickets sold out early once again so even if you wanted to be there maybe you couldn’t, which means your lack of attendance may not have been extreme poor judgment on your part. Let’s go with that. Because I do like you and want to continue to believe you’re a good decision maker.

Potter Wines returned for our second year as Savor Idaho vendors. Before that, my winemaker and I had attended as consumers for numerous years and from that perspective we knew someday when we opened up shop we wanted to be a part of this event. So, armed with Riesling, our “hot” wines, the Jalapeno Wine Lemonade and our Booth Babe, Tony – we took to the gorgeous Idaho Botanical Garden for another top-notch event.

If you’re unfamiliar with this occurrence, Savor Idaho is a wine and food event which highlights a noteworthy selection of Idaho wineries and restaurants. You purchase your ticket (well ahead of time, in case you skimmed over the above and didn’t catch that important piece) and once inside you are greeted with a commemorative wine glass and a handy food tray. These two things are imperative to your experience at this event and will be attached to you at all times. If you can’t handle that part I’m afraid you do not qualify as a potential attendee. Please spend this next year practicing at home and try again in 2016.

You will be exposed to all the wine you can drink and a vast array of food from chefs who know what they’re doing. Each winery is typically paired alongside a restaurant or caterer, which makes a lot of sense both for consumers and vendors: With all that wine to drink people need access to good food or else things get sloppy (no rookies, please). And it makes for some great networking on our side of things, too.

This year the format was a bit different than last and the Idaho Grape Growers and Wine Producers Commission did a fantastic thing in teaming up with the Boise Co-Op Wine Shop to sell select wines by the glass (or Jalapeno Wine Lemonade). The fun and hip Bodovino was also there this year to pour samples of rare and “experimental” wines which we wineries weren’t already serving in our own booths. So naturally, this was a perfect fit for our Pineapple Jalapeno Wine.

We set up our booth quickly. Thanks to showcasing our products at two farmers’ markets every Saturday, we’ve become quite efficient at this. Here are a few photos of the calm before the wine-loving storm. Vendor booths take up a good portion of the grounds at the garden, so while you sip on Idaho wine and sample Idaho fare you also get to wander around one of Idaho’s most impressive attractions.

The first hour of Savor Idaho is reserved for V.I.P and trade (media/buyers/growers/etc.). So before that kicked off we walked around to visit some of our favorites. These include, but are not limited to, Mouvance, Telaya, Hat Ranch, Williamson Vineyards, Fujishin, Cinder, and Coiled.

After chatting for a while with everyone I realized I was really slacking on my photography duties. So I snapped a few photos before we returned to our post.

Once back at our booth, we spoke with many individuals from the media/trade and as we approached 2 pm, when the public was due to enter, we glanced over and watched this line grow by about 20 people a minute.

Let the games begin!

From 2 to 6 pm we poured for, laughed, and spoke with some returning but mostly new faces. Many had heard of us before although most were new to the Jalapeno Wine Lemonade since we just released it earlier this spring.

We were also paired up with possibly the most fitting restaurant/caterer there, Kanak Attack. They were sampling their seriously delectable pork street tacos, which went un-shockingly well with our wines and lemonade. Happy people = happy vendors!

Rumor was the Wine Shop sold out of all our products, which we confirmed later was true. No complaints there.

We want to give a big shout-out to Moya and her team at the Idaho Wine Commission for putting on another terrific event! Sometimes it takes a village to bring the right people together and Moya’s village is the kind you could confidently leave your first-born with and they would return your baby to you with an enviable work-ethic, above-standard expectations and impressive hygiene. Pretty sure that’s who I want running this show.

See you next year!