Growing Together: Wine and Dine at Vine and Branch Ranch
Vine and Branch Ranch, viewed from above. (All photos credit Guy Hand.)
Walking into Vine and Branch Ranch’s tasting room is a bit like stepping inside an album cover—maybe something by the Eagles or Polyrhythmics.
A cow skull lords over the wooden bar, set against a background of zigzagging stripes. A string of colorful baubles hangs from its long-disused horns. In the dining room, where guests crowd around low tables, sipping wine and breaking chunks from crusty Acme Bakeshop loaves, a mobile of cascading paper flowers hovers like a stolen cloud. You’d never know that just a few years ago, this space was a ramshackle fruit shed.
Vine and Branch Ranch is multifaceted: part wine and cider tasting room, part farm-to-table restaurant and part farm stand. The wine comes courtesy of Snake River Winery, which is owned and run by Scott and Susan DeSeelhorste. Josie and Clay Erskine, the owners of Peaceful Belly Farm, see to the rest, including fermenting the Stack Rock Cidery line on site and growing produce for the restaurant and store. It’s a collaborative operation born from years of friendship.
“When we opened a tasting room in the Boise Towne Square mall, I think it was in 2005 or so, [Josie] ran that for us for three months,” said Scott. “And then over the years we’ve just become friends.”
More collaborations followed: Snake River provides wine for Peaceful Belly’s farm-based dinners, and when Clay started making cider he used Scott’s spare equipment. Still, a partnership as significant as Vine and Branch remained unrealized when Scott, on the hunt for a new tasting room in 2015, came across a 14-acre parcel that would become part of it.
“Since Clay was already making the cider out there and we had that relationship going, it was like, ‘Well, let’s just build a cidery out there and do a joint tasting room, and we can also do a small farm stand,’” Scott said.
The DeSeelhorstes and Erskines formed the company Vine and Branch Ranch to purchase the land, and eventually bought a neighboring 19-acre parcel, too. That property boasted a house, which the Erskines moved into in 2016, and a fruit shed, which became the tasting room. They planted berry bushes, wine grapes, flowers, vegetables and herbs on the land, then pushed themselves to carve out space inside for their restaurant, which offers a small seasonal menu. A third financial partner, Tim Andrae, officially joined the Vine and Branch team in 2018, and the tasting/dining room opened to the public that November.
To pull off such a delicate balance of families and ideas is certainly a challenge, but it’s one Josie, the creative force behind Vine and Branch, seems born for.
“This restaurant on a farm has kind of been our dream from the start,” she said, adding, “It took all the brains. It took the courage of Scott to even start it or see it, and then it’s kind of taken Clay’s and my fortitude to just keep it going, you know what I mean? And Tim really keeps the whole thing in check, in balance, because we have a mission.”
That mission is to celebrate the Treasure Valley with an experience that’s entirely local. At Vine and Branch, everything from the art on its walls and the events on its calendar to the wine in everyone’s glasses screams “Idahomade and proud of it!”
Josie is known for her collaborative spirit outside of Vine and Branch, too. Tamara Cameron, marketing and development manager for the Boise Farmers Market, where Peaceful Belly is a vendor, called her “the queen of collaboration.” She added that Vine and Branch–type partnerships, which BFM works to foster, are a growing trend in Boise.
One BFM success story in that vein is Waffle Me Up, which shares its gourmet waffle shop space on Capitol Boulevard with local burger hot spot Boise Fry Company. Brad Walker, the CEO of BFC, said there are a lot of pros to sharing space, including cost savings for both parties on maintenance and marketing, and a less competitive market for largescale retail spots. If “the cultures jibe,” as he put it, things will probably work out. If not, they won’t.
“At the end of the day separate businesses sharing a space are partners. If you don’t like the other person, or even their product or service, it won’t work,” he said. “BFC employees love the waffles and their employees. I think the feeling is mutual!”
Asked if collaborations like the one at Vine and Branch could be the future for local businesses, Josie said that considering rising costs, “I think in some ways it has to be.”
“We’ve got to have it all together,” she said later, still mulling. “It all has to be together, because then we can really build a sense of place.”
This story was originally published by Edible Idaho. Read the original here.