2018

Tolenas “Eclipse”

Pinot Noir

Tenbrink Vineyard

Featured on June 27, 2019

Where: Suisun Valley, California

Who: Lisa Howard, 2nd-generation winemaker and licensed engineer

Why: We’d already decided this crisp and compelling wine was a summer necessity when word came in from the 2019 International Women’s Wine Competition: Eclipse had won a gold medal. Congrats to Tolenas and all the winners.

How: This white wine is actually made from red grapes. It was during a grape harvest under the solar eclipse in 2017, the idea for a white Pinot Noir emerged.

Visit winery page.

The thought of making a white wine with the red Pinot Noir grapes popped into my mind and I just chuckled thinking this is either going to be really great, or fail miserably, but we have to try it.”

Says Lisa:

“We were scheduling our picking days and realized we were going to be harvesting our estate Pinot Noir during the Great American Eclipse of 2017. When I realized how special of a day it was, I knew we needed to create a special wine to match.

Getting a white Pinot Noir right is no simple feat. “We hand-picked and pressed the whole grape clusters, very gently, to extract the juice while not imparting any color from the skins into the wine.”

In 2018, harvest arrived, and the pressure was on to repeat the prior year’s success.

“This wine was an exciting journey as a new winemaker, I succeeded in duplicating a wine style, and dare I say improved it. My dream with the White Pinot “Eclipse” is to have it be that wine on a wine list in a restaurant or in a retail store that strikes interest and conversation, then quickly becomes your go-to white wine.”

Find your summer supply of Tolenas Eclipse here>

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