Telaya Wine Company thrives in Boise area

Published 1:56 am Thursday, September 13, 2018

Earl Sullivan

Earl and Carrie Sullivan both left corporate careers to start making wine in 2008 and now own a wine company and tasting room in Garden City, Idaho.

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“The name of the company, Telaya, is a blend of the word Tetons and La Playa (Spanish for beach) — our two favorite places to be,” he explained.

“At first we were using Washington fruit. There was no facility in Idaho where we could manufacture our own wine on a small scale. Then in 2011 we found a spot where several other wineries joined us in one location. It wasn’t a custom crush operation, just a group of us trying to share space,” Earl Sullivan said. “We rented equipment or production time from Cinder Wineries here in Garden City, but had our own winemakers, our own barrels.”

Then 2 1/2 years ago Telaya Wine moved into their own production facility.

“We now have a 15,000-square-foot tasting room and production facility that my wife and I built, right on the Boise River at Garden City,” Sullivan said.

The tasting room patio looks out onto the greenbelt along the river, next door to the Riverside Hotel and across from Quin’s Pond and Simplot Park.

“This is an up-and-coming location and a good place to be. When we bought the property from the hotel it was just a parking lot. We took a raw piece of ground and created exactly what we wanted for a production facility and tasting room.”

The Sullivans wanted to get big enough to have their own facility and independent tasting room rather than a shared space.

“We still source our fruit from different vineyards in Idaho and Washington and truck it here for production,” he said.

“There are more Idaho vineyards now, which allows us to have more Idaho fruit in our profile and less Washington fruit. Our labels state whether the wine was made from Idaho fruit or Washington fruit; we don’t mix the two,” he explains.

The tasting room is open 7 days a week from noon to 6 p.m.

“We rent the space out after those hours, for various events, from 7 p.m. to 10. We host all kinds of events — from wedding anniversaries to graduation or birthday parties, corporate events or holiday parties,” he said.

Telaya has 9 full-time employees in production, the tasting room and administrative functions to put on all the events and make sure everything works smoothly. This is a year-round operation, closed only 4 days of the year.

It’s a great location. People can ride off the green belt, park their bike and walk in the front door,” he said. “The Riverside Hotel is next door, so there is also a lot of tourist traffic.”

“My wife and I are here nearly every day so customers can interact with the winemakers and we focus on a high level of hospitality. We make sure they feel very welcome, and that wine is very approachable. If people are new to wine-drinking or haven’t had much experience with Idaho wines they can feel at ease, ask questions and get good information about wine,” he said.

“All of our staff must work in production for a period of time so they are familiar with the whole process. We took our staff to Italy last year to tour through one of our main barrel manufacturers and see how European-style wines are made,” Sullivan said.

“They got some education on how our barrels are produced. This is a very critical aspect of what we do — making sure we have the right barrels for the right wine. We spend a lot of time educating ourselves as well as our staff.”

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