I was inspired to make this the Word of the Week by a dear friend of mine who came home from a Sun Valley ski trip to with a case of Idaho wine. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had a wine from the state better known for potatoes. I asked him what sort of wine it was, and he said, “I got mixed case of chardonnay, merlot, syrah, cabernet, and cuvée.”

Because he invited me over for my virgin Idaho wine experience, I forgave my friend his minor lapse in parallel structure. He had implied that that cuvée was a varietal, like chardonnay, merlot, syrah, and cabernet, but it’s not.

What is it then, and how did that Idaho wine taste? Click here to find out:

“Cuvée” is used in French winemaking to refer to a batch or a blend. Often it marks out a batch or blend that’s somehow special, as in it came from the best parcels of the vineyard, the best grapes, or the oldest vines. For example, Moet makes a bunch of different champagnes, and Dom Perignon is its “Tête de Cuvée,” or top of the line. Sometimes “cuvée” just means that it’s a different batch, not necessarily the best, and sometimes winemakers use it informally to mean “the finished wine,” as in, after a lot of blending and tasting, this is the recipe that I’m going to bottle.

But how was the Idahoan cuvée, which happened to be made by one Frenchman’s Gulch Winery in Ketchum out of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, and petit verdot grapes? Very respectable — perhaps because the grapes actually come from neighboring Washington state. (The vine pictured above, though, is growing on the Idaho side of the border, just for proof that viticulture does happen there.) But my friend and I loved the wine’s seriousness, balance, and its little bit of spiciness. It was a 2003, and should be priced around $35.