Hello Idaho and to our 3rd stop in our Idaho Road Trip Series! We welcome Will Wetmore owner, winemaker extraordinaire of Veer Wine Project! Will joins us to talk about his adventures to what is now Veer and so many more things he’s involved in! Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride!

From the heart of the Oregon wine country, you're listening to

season five of the Wine crush podcast.

Stories uncorked for casual wine enthusiasts around the world, featuring

winemakers from the Willamette Valley, sponsored by Country Financial.

From origin stories to terroir, here's your host, Heidi Moore.

Hey everybody, welcome to Wine Crush podcast.

We are on our Idaho road trip and this is our third stop.

Actually, we've been here the whole time, but we're actually talking to

the owner of the third stop, which is Will with the Veer Wine Project.

Yep.

Yep.

Love the name.

Yeah.

Well, so technically it's just Veer Wine Project.

Not the.

Or the Veer Wine Project.

Well, we're going to call it the Veer Wine Project because it makes it feel

a little bit more special and official.

Okay, that sounds good.

However you want to, you know, whatever.

Whatever you want to name it, I'm going to end up with the in front of it.

Veer Wine Project.

Yes.

All right.

But number one, thank you for letting us crash your party here and

set up our little makeshift studio.

Yeah, I'm glad it worked out.

It worked out perfect.

This is really great, so thank you for all the text messages and all the harassment

I think that I've probably sent your way.

No, not a big deal.

Thank you for coming out to Idaho.

Yeah.

Well, it's a cool space too.

Thank you.

Yes, cool space.

Again, kind of more of an urban winery in the heart of Caldwell on Chicago Street.

That's right.

It sounds really fancy being on Chicago Street.

Yeah.

But let's talk some wine.

When I met you a couple of years ago, you were, I don't

think you'd launched this yet.

No, so I think that was 2017 or 18.

2017 or 2018, it was pre-COVID.

Yeah, so I was, I still am.

I still am one of the winemakers for Hat Ranch Winery here on the sunny

slope in the Snake River Valley.

And in 2016, the owners of Hat Ranch let me start making some wines on my own.

So I was making wines under this label, Veer, but mainly a barrel

here or a barrel there, and I'd sell it to my friends and family.

And it wasn't until 2021 where I actually opened up my tasting room, got my, all my

permits in order, got my own space, built the tasting room where we actually opened

up and started ramping up production and starting a wine club and really

trying to make this a true business.

Like a real thing.

Like it's a real thing now.

Yeah, like a real job.

It's a real job that I don't get paid for.

But you know, that's why I still make wine for hat Ranch and get a paycheck that way.

So it kind of helps me pay the, the taste room staff here and helps me, you know,

continue to grow this without having to take on big burden of, you know,

loans or investors as of this point.

Yeah, for sure.

Let's kind of rewind just a little bit because you did not come out of high

school or even middle school or whatever and go, hey I'm going to be a winemaker.

Nope, I was going to be a baseball player.

Well, every little boy is going to be a baseball player.

It took me longer to realize I wasn't going to be a baseball player.

So what was that actual age?

I'm curious what age?

I was probably 20 years old when I was like, I'm probably not going to get

paid to do this because I'm not that good.

Oh, well there you go.

At least you hadn't like fully crusted into, you know, like your mid to

late 20s and into 30s and lost a lot of prime time in real estate.

Yeah, I think when I was sitting on the bench of a Division iII baseball

team, I was like, you know, it's probably not, probably not the career path for me.

And that's when I was like, I'm going to study biology and that's kind of, you

know, what started this path towards wine.

Okay, so we realized that we're not going to be a baseball player.

We decided to do biology and so where does it go from there?

Biology degree at the University of Redlands, which is in Southern California.

From there, brewing beer with my roommates in college and, you know,

getting interested in fermentation.

I met my wife at the university down there and we ended up, you know,

through a few years it took us to get back to Boise where she's from.

You know, she was in medical school so she was really busy and

I was working two or three jobs basically while she was in school.

And I worked odd jobs, lumber yards, driving a truck, and I

kind of found my home working at restaurants and started getting into

the service industry here in Boise.

And I was managing a restaurant down in downtown Boise and

still brewing beer at home.

And that's when I started drinking more Idaho wines, you know, doing the wine

menus and, you know, the local winemakers would come in and try to sell us the wine.

And so I got to taste a lot of local wine.

And this was probably about 2013, 12 and 13.

So I saw that the industry was growing really fast here.

You know, I had that interest in fermentation, brewing beer at home.

And when my wife finished medical school, it was kind of like, what do I want to do?

What do I want to study now?

And I always thought I wanted to do a brewery, but after drinking

wine and meeting some of the winemakers here, I thought, well,

it'd be kind of fun to try wine.

So through a kind of a few lucky events, I met Tim from Hat ranch Winery and kind

of told him my interest in getting into the industry and in the production side

as opposed to like the hospitality side.

In 2014, he had an opening for Harvest and called me up and said, hey, I heard

you wanted to help out with a winery.

And I said, yeah, I showed up the next day and he hasn't gotten rid of me.

And it's been eight years.

I've learned a lot from him and learned a lot.

I went to Washington State Enology Program.

So I did that in 16 and 17.

And then I spent eight months in New Zealand and worked at a small

New Zealand winery down there, which did about 500 tons a year,

which is seems really big to me.

So how many cases does that equate to when you're

looking at 500 tons approximately?

Just for context.

30.

Let's see.

60 times 500.

30,000 cases.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's-

If my quick math is right.

We're just going to call it good and hope that you're right and

probably assume that you are right.

Yeah.

Because 50 tons is about 3,000 cases.

There we go.

There we go.

Got to go backwards sometimes on this.

So what was that experience like?

I mean, what did you take away from that?

Yeah, it was great because up until that point, I'd only

worked here in Idaho in one winery.

So my knowledge was kind of limited in just my own production here.

So going to a different winery seeing how they run a cellar, how they manage

harvest, how they do their fermentations.

The winery I worked for did a lot of wild whole cluster fermentations.

And so up until that point, I've been kind of traditional, inoculate,

de-stem, pretty traditional winemaking.

I guess traditional in the modern sense.

And they get these kind of more hands-off, low intervention.

So I got to see a little bit more of that, which I really liked.

And I really liked the outcomes of the wines.

So I incorporated a lot of that in my winemaking style when

I came back for my own wines.

Is that where Veer comes from?

I mean, like when I hear it, I'm like, because I know a little bit

of your backstory, and we've talked about this, but it's almost like

veering off the normal path and onto kind of something a little bit

more wild, a little bit more crazy.

Yeah.

I think there's some of that.

I mean, I did come up with a name before I went down there, but I think

that's why it kind of clicked with me.

It was kind of, you know, I had seen wine made a certain way, and

you make great wine that way too.

But for me, for my own personal project, I wanted it to be something

that spoke to me a little bit more.

And so veering, you know, not making the same things that I'm making for Tim and

Hot Ranch and try my own style, I suppose.

Your own spin on things.

Yeah.

And that's why I call it Veer, right?

It's a reminder to me to change my mind if I want to, try different things,

not be afraid of outcomes really, and kind of remind me to be curious without

being afraid of maybe making a mistake.

When I was here a couple months ago, you were telling me about this

experiment that you had out in one of the vineyards, one of the fields, I guess.

And I think we actually have that in the bottle right there that

you just, let's pour that really quick because A, my glass is empty.

And I've been thinking about this wine for three months and just

wondering what it's actually going to taste like, feel like, smell like.

Oh, it's red.

I thought this was a Riesling.

Oh, look at it.

I've been thinking down the wrong path this entire time.

Well, I do have a Riesling that was, I think last time we talked, I do have

a Riesling that was whole cluster, that was on skin still when I talked to you.

That's been since pressed and is now in bottle.

That's my bottle today.

Oh, okay.

But this, so this is my vineyard ferment.

Again, this is another thing that the winery I worked at in New Zealand did.

They didn't like lots of Pinot.

I think half of their production was about Pinot Noir.

The concept was you'd pick it, you'd bring a little kind of

de-stemmer out into the vineyard.

Instead of bringing the grapes back to the winery, they'd take each

bucket as they picked it, dump it right into the de-stemmer, right

into the fermentation bin in the middle of the rows of the grapevines.

And then they literally just put a cover on it and let it

sit for until it fermented.

So this is what was inspired.

This is Malbec that we picked from Famicci vineyards down near

Hat Ranch on the sunny slope.

It was about a half ton.

Again, I did some whole cluster on this because I like doing whole cluster.

De-stem the rest right on top.

This was picked end of October.

I think it was October 18th when I was just looking at my notes.

And it sat in the vineyard until November 24th.

So it was in the vineyard for over a month.

And so you can imagine here in Idaho, it's pretty cold that time of year.

It was towards the end of harvest to begin with and then it sat in the cold.

So the fermentation went really slow.

You know, wild ferment that sat at, before it started fermenting,

it was sitting at like 35 degrees.

So it was like basically cold soaking for two weeks before it

started generating enough heat to start doing its fermentation.

And it finished, you know, I brought it into the winery.

It was down to about one brick.

So it hadn't completely finished out dry, but it was up to 60

degrees and it was ticking along.

So it's a Malbec that fermented like a white wine in the cold outside in Idaho.

And it's different than a lot of Malbecs.

Yeah, it has a, yeah, I mean, just even the smell, it seems

like, I don't know, that's actually probably not very intelligent,

but it just, it's not super jammy.

Like it's, it's not jammy at all.

And a lot of Malbecs have like kind of a big, bold smell to them if I, you know.

Yeah, to me, it's a, it's a lot more floral.

Yeah.

And then, and then of course I had to do even more weird stuff to this.

So once I pressed it and I went to barrel, I went to neutral barrels,

so it was only two barrels with it.

So it's not a lot, but one was a, just kind of a regular French neutral barrel.

And the other barrel, what I did is actually, it was right

after we racked some Chardonnay.

So one of the barrels was actually, I just filled right

on top of the Chardonnay Lees.

So I didn't rinse the barrel or anything.

So one barrel is aged in a Chardonnay barrel on Chardonnay Lees.

Interesting.

So I kind of sometimes get like a little bit of that diacetyl kind of

buttery thing from the Chardonnay.

And, you know, I wanted to give it a try.

I mean, why not?

I guess, you know, worst case scenario, you turn it to vinegar, let it

really sit out or, or, I mean, you dump it or you sell it for cheap.

I mean, there's, there's always an option for it.

You can do something with it or blend it out or whatever.

But this is, yeah, I mean, it's, it's not as big and bold and I

guess jammy, like, like a Malbec.

It's, yeah, it's an easy drinker.

Yeah.

It's, it's, I think...

Not super acidic.

Especially with that cold ferment, right?

You don't extract a lot of tannin.

You don't attract as much color.

And to me, it kind of preserves a little bit of like kind of light, light fruity

notes and then that super, super floral.

Yeah, it's pretty.

The color is really, Malbec is always pretty.

Yeah.

There's always that kind of deep purpley, you know, color to it.

It's always so pretty.

You know, and, and I think for me, it was, it was an experiment, right?

I had seen it done in New Zealand with those pinots that they did.

But when I was pulling it out of barrel to get ready to bottle it,

I was just curious, like, what's the chemistry going to be on this?

Is it going to have a ton of vA or have weird high pH and weird numbers?

And sure enough, chemistry on it from the lab was like, perfect numbers for

a red wine, low VA and everything.

So it's pretty amazing what you can do.

Let's shift gears a little bit and let's talk about this Riesling,

this orange wine that you bottled today.

People think orange wine, like I mentioned it earlier, and people are

like, ooh, do they actually use oranges?

And I'm like, no, that's really not the way that works.

So, yeah.

So let's talk about that because it is, I mean, you see it a little bit more

because it's become a little bit, I don't know if kitschy is the right word,

but it's, people are seeing it a little bit more and they wonder what it is.

Yeah.

I think it's kind of like this natural wine movement.

I think that's happened recently, but it's basically, yeah, like

it's a white wine that you treat like a red wine in some cases.

So it's white wines that you let ferment with the skins on them.

And a lot of white grapes aren't white.

They got some golden color to them.

So when you ferment on those skins, you start extracting some

of that golden color as well.

Also you get some oxidation, which happens, which also kind

of enhances that golden color.

So you end up with a wine that has this orange hue to it and there's varying

degrees depending on what grapes you use and the chemistry of the wine itself.

But they can be kind of tannic white wines that can have a

little bit of funkiness to them.

I mean, they can be weird for sure.

And I necessarily don't love orange wines, the taste of them, but I

do kind of like the trying stuff out and making different things.

So the orange wines were kind of like a natural progression.

It's like, I've never done this before.

Let's give it a shot.

And I try to make them in a way that they're approachable for people.

Even if you don't like orange wines, I think you might like the ones that I do.

I think sometimes with the orange wines or natural wines, some people think that

the winemakers just kind of like, just let it go and just see what happens.

Or I still kind of keep track and intervene.

I'll use sulfur.

It's not a true natural wine.

I'll fine it.

I'll rack it.

I'll make sure it's nice and clear.

But I just kind of keep that concept of skin fermented whites, basically.

You don't see that a lot.

I mean, usually it seems like the whites are pressed, pressed fairly

quickly and you don't get a lot of the skin contact and stuff like that.

So again, veering off the path, trying something new.

For the most part, when people are making white wines, you want to get

it off the skins quick because that's how you get like kind of cleaner,

fresher, fruity white wines that really showcase like varietal character.

But when you like leave it on skins and expose it to oxygen and stems,

you kind of lose a lot of varietal character and you get kind of some

secondary flavors and they can be interesting or they can be weird.

It's a good way to put it.

And you know, but there's a drinker for every bottle.

Yeah.

It seems like there's, I mean, it's, I see some that

are like way funky for me.

Like I don't enjoy them, but they have a following and you know, this particular

winemaker always sells out of his wine.

But it's not my jam, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.

It's just not right for me.

And that's kind of like the, I'm looking for customers that are

just like curious to try new stuff.

Like, oh, I've never had this.

Like I love when people say, oh, I've never had an orange wine or I've never

had this type of blend or I've never had a whole cluster merlot or, you know, I

made a champagne style out of Moscato from the Hat Ranch vineyards moscato.

And it's like things that people maybe haven't tried before.

It's kind of hard to do because it's like a lot of wine drinkers

have drank a lot of wine.

Oh, for sure.

And you know, but you do kind of get into the ruts of, you know,

kind of the same thing, you know, different styles, but same varietal,

you know, or, you know, different toir, but you know, same varietal.

So let's talk about some of the other ones that you do.

Sure.

Because you have a whole list over on the board

of just your current releases.

Yep.

So let's see, I've done, I do barrel fermented rosé.

I've done that a couple of different vintages now.

And that one has a cool name.

I'll actually, all your wines have a cool name.

Most of them anyways.

Yeah.

I kind of got started with these like French terms or names and

I just kind of went with it.

So yeah, soigné, elegantly dressed.

It's a barrel fermented rosé.

Is that what that means?

Yeah, elegantly dressed.

Oh, I like it.

You're so soigné.

Yes, I know.

I'm going to have to start using that.

So that one is, I've done three different vintages and I'll do it

again this year, but it's basically what I try to do is, it doesn't

matter what the grape variety is, but I'm going to like foot stomp it.

So I'll get the grapes in, whole cluster, foot stomp it.

So I get kind of a light extraction on the color, press it, go straight

to barrel and then let a barrel ferment, wild barrel ferments.

So they ferment dry.

They're not super sweet or fruity.

They're a little more on the savory side and you get some texture from the barrel.

I'll stir the barrels for a couple months as well.

And then those are filtered and bottled.

White wines, I've done a Gewurztraminer in the past, which

I did kind of in a dry style.

This past year I did a, just a kind of a regular Riesling, off-dry Riesling,

which was a wild ferment, but in tank.

What else have I done?

Carmagnier, GSM, I did a GSM blend and I'll probably, that's going to

be one of my product lineups now is my GSM because I got contracts for

Gurnache, Syrah and Moved finally.

I was just going to ask you to define that, but you naturally

just shoved it right in there.

Yeah, Gurnache, Syrah, Movedra, which I think grow really well here.

They're Rhone varieties and a lot of people make really

good Rhone reds here in Idaho.

Yeah, and you see that combination, not often, but you see that combination

with the GSM, it seems like more often or maybe that's just the way it's

marketed and people just like that blend.

I think Gurnache to do as a single varietal is kind of hard, but I

think it makes a good blending partner.

So I think that's a main reason you see it in blends a lot.

It's a grape that is kind of really light skin.

It's pretty big and it's really prolific so you can get a lot of fruit.

So it's typically in those blends, it's kind of like, oh,

it also gets super high alcohol.

So you kind of need to tamp it down with some other stuff as well.

So you don't get totally bombed.

Yeah.

Too high of alcohol.

Yeah.

Too hot.

So it's like, it can be like fruity and boozy.

Yes.

So some of those other stuff will kind of bring it back and give

it some more color and some more, something a little more interesting

than just like kind of a fruit bomb.

Yeah, and it's always appreciative when you get something like that,

that has so many different layers and structures to it to where, again, it

takes it back to be an interesting.

Yeah.

Yes.

And fun, fun to open the next bottle.

So I know you have some Barbera over there, which is one of my favorite reds.

Barbera, yeah.

So yeah, that one I got from a tiny like a home vineyard.

So this guy, it was 2018, I was buying some good virtue meter from a vineyard in

Payette and the guy, Mike, he was funny.

He's like, yeah, I got my buddy.

He's got like, he's got some grapes to sell you if you want some.

And I was like, sure.

So we walked over to his friend's house and he's got like a quarter of an acre

and he's got 150 plants of Barbera.

He's like, yeah, I'll sell it to you.

So it was literally like a one-off thing where he went out and we just picked

it ourselves and brought it into the winery and made it and people loved it.

So I don't know if I would make that again.

Yeah.

So you might as well try it.

But how fun to find something like this little hidden secret in somebody's yard.

Yeah.

And that's kind of the fun thing when you're first starting and you're

making a small amount of wine, you can kind of do that kind of stuff.

And now, you know, I'm going to make more wine this year.

It's like, I don't know if I can do that, but I want to try to remind

myself that that's kind of how it started is trying these fun things

and working with whoever I can.

And these little secret vineyards that are in the corners of Idaho.

Yeah.

Okay.

What else?

We talked about your champagne one.

So let's kind of circle back to that one again because you don't see

that very often with what you did.

Yeah.

So it's Muscat Ottenell from Hat Ranch Winery.

For Hat Ranch, we make a dry white wine out of it and it's one best

white wine in Idaho multiple times.

In 2019, we had a crop that was enormous.

It was like over 11 tons.

So Tim let me buy a ton.

And yeah, we just picked it early, it was in August actually, end of August before

it got too high in alcohol or sugar.

So then we basically pressed it, went to barrel, did barrel ferment on it, let

it age in barrel for about six months.

Then that was racked to tank.

We blended some sugar back into it and some more yeast and bottled it.

And then we let that re-ferment in the bottle and age for about

18 months just on its side.

So you get the kind of the yeast breaking down and building some more

flavors and textures in the bottle.

And then again, just disgorging it and getting it nice and clean.

And it's very interesting.

So we made it like, you know, try to be very traditional in the champagne style.

But it's, you know, it's got Moscato nose for sure, like this kind of like

spicy, fruity floral nose, but then it's got this interesting texture and

there's a nice super fine bubbles to it.

It's a cool wine.

I mean, it's a little bit confusing for somebody that drinks bubbles because

it doesn't have the big cage and like whatever, you actually capped it.

Yeah, just got a beer cap on it.

Yeah, which is simple, you know, but usually you see that as more

of like a carbon-infused wine versus an actual true champer noir style.

So I did not know that.

So that's a...

Yep.

I just didn't, you know, I don't have the equipment.

I just had this little hand capper to...

Ah, so expensive, the equipment for champagne.

It's crazy.

And I can't imagine there's probably somebody over here that really does

that as a business at this point.

No, we do have one of my good friends, Haley, she has 3100 sellers and

all she does is sparkling and she does it in that like kind of traditional method.

So she's the one that actually kind of like talked me through, like

this was the process and this is how we do it with our setup, right?

Because that's the thing is like any of this winemaking, there's

like the textbook way to do it, but you need the equipment to do it.

So, you know, talking to other winemakers and talking to other

small wineries, especially it's like, this is how we solve this problem.

We can't buy the X, Y, and Z equipment.

So this is how we kind of come up with our solution.

Yep.

Get around it.

Yeah.

In a creative way.

Yeah.

Sometimes.

That works.

Yeah.

Well, it's good when it works.

Yeah.

Yes.

When it does work, you just take that page out of the book and you

try something different next time.

People need to know where to find you.

For somebody that's really looking for great wine, just in general, because

you do make really nice wine, but also things that are a little bit off the

beaten path or veering, you're a great place to pick up something that's

new and interesting and fun to try.

Yeah.

So we needed to figure out where to find you and how people buy your stuff.

VeerWineProject.com.

Not the.

Not the, just VeerWineProject.com if you're not in the area and there's,

you know, we can ship to most states.

And then if you're local in Idaho, swing by the tasting room in Idaho.

The Boise Co-op Wine Shop has some of our stuff too.

But yeah, online or swing by the Taster Room every Saturday and Sunday.

One thing I forgot to ask you was, of everything that you do and

you've done, what's the favorite?

Oh, what's the favorite?

Yeah.

Favorite child today?

It's actually the Spincense.

I really like it.

The fruit was awesome when we got it.

So like once you have good fruit, you know, you're just trying

to not, try not to mess it up.

And it was the, it was kind of the first red wine I made post New

Zealand when I incorporated some of that whole cluster and wild ferment.

And, you know, it turned out really well.

So it's kind of inspired me to keep going with that kind of style.

So yeah, this is the one I've been drinking, I think at home the most.

The one with the fancy label that you labeled for us today?

That's the Vineyard Ferment.

Oh, that's the Vineyard Ferment.

And the other one is the first one we started with.

Yeah, the first one.

Yeah.

The one that's named after my mom.

I can't see the label.

So, you know, I had to make things up and I chose, I always choose wrong.

If there is a 50-50 shot, I always choose wrong.

And this is why I do not gamble very much and hardly at all because it

gives me a stomach ache to gamble.

Well, as always, you are always fun to be around.

There's always something new that you are teaching and telling me.

And again, I appreciate you letting us squat at your place here and

do our little dog and pony show.

Yeah.

Sorry if there's, you know, random doors and fans turning off here and

there, but it is production area.

No, it's actually great.

I think the train out back has been the biggest noise maker, but it just

adds ambiance to the whole thing.

So I will be back and I hope people buy lots of wine and I'll give

you a call when I'm back around.

All right.

Thank you.