For Jackie Elo, wine is not just a beverage. It is a lifestyle, and one that seems made for her. Her passion for wine exudes brightly whenever she enters that world.
Jackie's love of wine blossomed at 19, when she convinced Paul "Pug" Ostling to hire her at his wine bar, Grape Escape. Despite not being of age to drink the wine herself, she dove headfirst into wine education. "I owe my passion and career to him," she says, crediting him with helping bring fine wines to Idaho.
Under his wing for ten years, Pug became both mentor and dear friend, and they have kept that relationship alive through holidays and weekly wine tastings. Now approaching her 21st year in the Boise wine world, Jackie's passion continues to grow through both her relationships and her career.
About eight years ago, Jackie took a leap into her dream job, joining Jeff Moore, advanced sommelier and founder of Amphora Wine Company, a boutique wine distributor. That step was less a sudden change than the result of years spent learning about wine from every angle. "I don't spend that much time and energy on anything else in my life. I truly feel blessed to work in my passion."
That passion, she believes, is essential at Amphora: "That is the quality that someone who works for a company like Amphora HAS to have. The commitment and passion for wine, people, culture, food, history." Experience matters, too. After earning a BFA in graphic design from Boise State, Jackie continued as the wine buyer at Grape Escape while working in design. She even created the Amphora logo and initially turned down the owner's job offer, knowing she needed more time in the industry before arriving at her dream job.
She gained that experience as a sales representative at J.W. Thornton, spending six years learning the practical side of distribution: servicing accounts, understanding a portfolio, working with buyers, and maintaining relationships in a competitive market. The job gave her confidence and clarified what she wanted: a thoughtful, selective portfolio rooted in producers with integrity.
Jackie smiled as she stated that she had become "unhireable for life" when she finally joined Amphora, because she now works with the wineries she loves most and believes in. Unlike big-box distributors with thousands of products, Amphora carries roughly 200 wineries and 1,000 SKUs, allowing the team to handpick favorite producers.
Amphora focuses largely on European producers, along with carefully chosen American wineries, and looks for small, family-owned, organic or biodynamic estates whenever possible. "We try to represent wines that have a sense of place and a story behind them," Jackie says. To her, a good bottle is not simply something to sell. It is a landscape, a family, a tradition, and a point of view.
Reflective of her bubbly and extroverted personality, Jackie is especially fond of Champagne. "Champagne is truly the top tier and that's what I crave." She mostly drinks from Grower Champagne houses, in which the people who make the wine also grow the grapes. Although she has no desire to make wine herself, she loves the life around it. "Every step of that process is a labor of love, and it makes me so happy."
No two weeks look the same at Amphora. Jackie often begins with downtown Boise rounds, stopping into restaurants and wine shops to check inventory, take orders, and talk through what buyers need. Back at the warehouse, she enters orders, prints invoices, pulls cases, and helps break down mixed pallets on truck day. Midweek gives way to the more romantic-looking part of the job: showing wine. When a winemaker or importer is in town, she spends the day visiting accounts, pouring a focused lineup and telling each bottle's story. Other weeks she builds her own lineup for buyers. Evenings extend the week with public tastings, wine dinners, and classes, all of which feed her love of connecting with people. She has also led the wine portion of Ale Fort during Boise's Treefort Music Fest for several years.
Jackie's years as a buyer make her empathetic with restaurant and shop owners. She understands their pressures, respects other distributors' strengths, and because she is not driven by commission, approaches the work with collaboration rather than competition.
The job can be demanding and less glamorous than people imagine, but for Jackie the labor is inseparable from the love. She has found balance through music with her husband Jared Goodpaster, co-founder of Boise Rock School, as well as running, traveling, and cooking spicy, global foods.
"Drink less, drink better" is the philosophy guiding both her habits and the bottles she is most excited to share. After two decades in Boise wine, Jackie has accumulated the experience, relationships, and convictions to recognize the rare job that fits her completely. At Amphora, she has found it.