Snake River Valley AVA wineries and tasting rooms

Snake River Valley became Idaho's first AVA in 2007, and its federal boundary reaches into just two Oregon counties, Baker and Malheur, on the state's far eastern edge. Vineyards here sit at some of the highest elevations grown anywhere in the country, roughly 2,500 to 3,000 feet, in a semiarid high desert that swings 30 to 40 degrees between day and night.

Copper Belt Wines is the only Oregon winery working this AVA, farming small lots out of Baker City in the state's high-desert Copper Belt: its own description puts it plainly, European-style wines made inside "the Oregon Snake River AVA." Everything else the appellation is known for sits across the state line in Idaho, where the region's oldest winery, Ste. Chapelle, opened in 1975 in Caldwell.

It's a genuinely small foothold (one winery, one corner of the Eastern Oregon region) inside an AVA whose real center of gravity is a different state entirely. Copper Belt is the only way to taste this ground from the Oregon side.