GARDEN CITY, Idaho — On a warm, sunny day, some folks spent their day sipping wine at Telaya, while taking in the Boise Greenbelt, and the woman behind the wine they were drinking is Carrie Sullivan.
“I am actually a veterinarian by education, I practiced for about 10 years,” Sullivan said.
She is the owner and winemaker for Telaya and one of the local women in wine who KTVB is raising a glass to and highlighting in honor of June being Idaho Wine Month.
“My husband and I had always loved wine. we are both scientists so, we definitely can appreciate the science behind winemaking,” Sullivan said.
She and her husband opened Telaya, when they decided they needed to make a change for their family.
“There are not very many wine emergencies, and there are a lot of animal emergencies,” Sullivan said. “My husband was in a job where he traveled internationally, the last year before we started making wine, he was overseas 280 days, and I was practicing full time and we had two kiddos under the age of three.”
She told KTVB, they started off small, making 50 cases of wine in 2008. They started selling wine in 2011.
“We actually moved in with Cinder down at 44th and Chinden and Leslie from Coiled was in there as well,” Sullivan said. “Starting a winery is not for the faint of heart or for the faint of wallet and so, it really helps for us to be able to bond together, we were able to share equipment and share space. and all three of our companies were able to kind of get our feet underneath of us and move out on our own. All three of us are still around, we're still really good friends and producing beautiful wines.”
It’s a bond, strung together like a vine of grapes.
“I'm very lucky to be here in Idaho, where there are so many other women winemakers and, when we get together, we love to kind of talk about, you know, we come together and it's great to kind of feel that camaraderie of being with other females,” Sullivan said.
Each of them, infusing a local touch into each glass of wine.
“As Boise has grown, more people that have come into Boise looking for that quality of life, more winemakers that have wanted to enjoy that quality of life and have started their wineries here versus in Washington or in Oregon or in California,” Sullivan said.
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