Ever since owners Jed Glavin and Laura Hefner-Glavin first nursed it to health inside their garage, Split Rail Winery has been splitting the industry status quo right down the middle. While Jed Glavin was working as an urban planner at an engineering company, the twosome found their winemaking side-gig growing closer to a full-blown venture as the community took notice. The turning point came when the Glavins shifted focus to experimenting with Idaho fruit.
Today, the Split Rail pair continues to source Snake River Valley grapes, and the team works magic on the haul at the label’s Garden City digs just outside of Boise. The trailblazing spirit that sparked the initial concept has since snowballed, making its way into each batch by the bottle (and can!).
“The longer I do this, I’m more and more of the mindset that wine needs to be fiddled with, and you should always try something new,” Jed Glavin says. “There’s this standard in the industry that you make the same Cabernet every year, you use the same oak and follow the same regimen. That, to me, is boring for the winemaker and for consumers. Variation is exciting.”
This mindset has given way to dreams of open-air fermentation, and the winery’s recent acquisition of a concrete egg has Glavin feeling more inspired than ever to delve into concrete aging methods.
“Everything we’re taught in winemaking is to keep things contained, sanitary, safe,” he says. “I wonder what would happen if fermentation was paired with Garden City air?”
Whatever the adventure-du-jour at the winery, the resulting lineup is sure to carry the label’s trademark whimsy, just as our chat with Glavin revealed. Read on for a taste of more Split Rail musings – from soon-to-hatch plans to beer fandom and Brit Rock.
1) Which of your own current offerings are you digging the most?
Really, I like everything we have in our repertoire right now, otherwise I guess we wouldn’t release it. Our first concrete-aged wine was released this spring, and we called that the Laser Fox Cinsault. It’s pretty wacky – if you’ve ever had Cinsault before, it’s really light and floral, almost like Pinot, and it has that mineral and wet stone nuance from the concrete. It’s really unlike any wine I’ve had from Idaho.
Our newest release, Horned Beast Syrah-Grenache-Mourvèdre, has been getting some accolades, which is always a little reassuring to me as the winemaker that we’re doing something right. I love Rhône blends and this vintage of the Horned Beast features just how good Idaho Syrah can be. There’s a lot of earth and berry fruit in there and the wine is great to drink on its own or with food.
We’re releasing a Rioja-style Tempranillo in the next few months called the Bearded Quixote that has 18 percent Grenache blended in. That wine is pretty fun, especially with all the buzz surrounding new world Tempranillo right now.
2) Any winemaking pipe dreams you’re dying to make a reality?
We’re constantly philosophizing about how we can stay ahead of the curve in the wine world, but still stay relevant to who we’re selling the wine to. I guess that’s the struggle; I would love to do all this super geeky stuff in the winery: natural fermentation, slight oxidation, and reduced oak regimens. I think stuff like that is cool, but it’s hard to find a market for it.
That said, this year we are going to try a super small-lot pet-nat. It’s pretty much a wild, natural, unfiltered and low-sulfur wine that gets bottled during the heat of fermentation, which makes it naturally sparkling. They’re usually super funky and weird, but they can be amazingly refreshing, and you can get some really exciting flavors from wine that isn’t all cleaned up and pretty. This will be our first stab at it, and there’s a high chance of screwing it up, so we’ll keep you posted.
3) What non-wine beverage is in your glass most these days? What is your favorite way to enjoy it and where?
Beer. I dig beer. It’s almost becoming a vice. I love saison, and dammit, I love a really good IPA. I also respect people in the beer industry for their ability to experiment and create new wacky stuff. Sometimes I feel like there’s less judgment in the beer industry than the wine industry. If you want to create a beer from carrots, do it. Everyone will applaud you. If you do that with wine, people will ask you what the hell you were thinking. Wine’s so old-world; it has this mantra that there is kind of a standard way that things need to be done. You don’t disrupt the wine gods.
4) Favorite song, album or artist to jam out to while throwing a few down the hatch?
That question is loaded. I’m kind of a music dork, so I hate to narrow things down to a drinking occasion. Really, music should be played at all hours of the day, in every room, always. I love Brit Rock, and my playlists are riddled with stuff by the Charlatans, Stone Roses, New Order, Primal Scream, Blur, Oasis, Jesus and Mary Chain, Kasabian, Echo and the Bunnymen, et cetera. I also love Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Raveonettes, Small Black and Sonny and the Sunsets. At the winery, we have all been a little stuck on this album by David Shaw and the Beat. Seems like every time I walk in, that album is playing. I’m sure next week it will be different though…
Four Questions is a bi-monthly call and response singing the praises of handmade beverages region wide, disguised as a plainclothes Q&A series. We pose a fixed set of questions to a different producer twice each month with the intention of revealing an expression of personality as varied as the unique offerings they create.
