Tolenas Winery busy with fermentation process – The Vacaville Reporter

Harvest season has begun for wineries in Suisun Valley, Solano County’s center of viticulture. One that has gotten a head start is Tolenas Winery.

The family-owned winery on Chadbourne Road is already in the fermenting and pump-over stage, where wine is pumped from the bottom of a MacroBin and splashed over the fermenting must, or crushed grape juice to submerge the skins and release carbon dioxide.

This is all part of the day-to-day experience for co-owner Lisa Howard, who loves the fact that winemaking offers something different each day.

“Some days, it’s really hands on, messy, super physical,” she said. “There’s days that it’s just all about the math and the science and learning.”

Although an integral part of the local wine industry now, and somebody who grew up in Suisun Valley and had parents who later became winemakers, Howard said she initially did not want to follow in their footsteps.

“My parents are first-generation farmers, so they had to work really hard to start this beautiful legacy that they have now, so it scared me off,” she said. “I was kind of chicken and thought I couldn’t support my family that way.”

Instead, Howard got a degree in engineering from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and moved to Arizona where she met her husband, Cliff. She would visit the winery for tastings at her parents’ winery whenever she came back to visit but did not consider it as a possible full-time career.

However, that changed when Howard had her first child and longed to be closer to her parents. She moved back around the time that her parents’ winery had barrels ready for tasting.

“It just sort of hit me that this really could be a job,” she said. “My kids could be with me — I wanted them to be — and I could be involved in my parents’ lives and continue this legacy that my parents had created.”

The following year, she and Cliff bought a small amount of fruit from her parents and became hooked on the practice after the first crush.

“From then on, I just read anything I can get my hands on that comes to winemaking,” she said. “I’m constantly looking up professional journals, talking to other winemakers, picking the brain of my dad and my brother.”

The Howards named their winery Tolenas because the grapes are grown on the original Rancho Tolenas, a Mexican land grant spanning from Solano to Napa counties that was bestowed to Jose Francisco Armijo in 1840.

Tolenas produces everything from sauvignon blancs to rosès to a petite sirah-based red blend to an award-winning white pinot noir called “Eclipse.” On Thursday, Howard and her crew were fermenting zinfandel grapes.

Howard said her wines differ from others because they are made in a nontraditional way with a lot of experimentation.

“We’re always trying new methods, new yeast, new vineyards, maybe different temperatures to ferment at,” she said. “It’s just very hands on, still very small-production craft winery.”

Moreover, Howard said she and Cliff are involved throughout every step of the process, including growing, oversight of vineyards, picking and fermenting.

“A lot of us here in Suisun Valley are still very small, hands-on wineries, which makes our region very special,” she said, “but a lot of the bigger wineries in other places, the winemaker may or may not be present for most of the time that fermentation is happening.”

On Thursday, Howard was working closely with apprentice winemaker Eden Canon. Howard’s daughter Katie was also very involved in the process, often serving as an early “taste tester” for the grapes.

The process consisted of destemmed grapes placed in two MacroBins and cold-soaked, warmed up and either inoculated with a a “native yeast.”

“We took advantage of the natural flora that came out of the vineyard,” she said. “We like to think that the native yeast that’s coming in on the bloom of the vine and the grapes is what was intended to ferment the grapes with, so we like to use it whenever we can.”

With the yeast converting the sugar in the grapes to alcohol, a pump is used to suck the juice through the bottom and splashed out of a large hose. The process is done twice a day to keep the juice in contact with the skins.

“All the flavor, tannins and the structure comes from the skins, and the grapes themselves,” she said. “If you remove the skins, you make a lighter-bodied wine, like a rosè.”

Howard said that large wineries often have large automated pumps that can do tasks such as temperature control systems.

“We don’t have any of that technology yet,” she said. “For now, it’s our eyes and ears and senses that are tracking all of that.”

Each container has approximately 200 gallons of wine, enough to fill two barrels.

Howard estimates that this batch will likely be ready to go on the market around 2023. While wine is often associated with glamor and fancy gatherings, Canon said the process to make it is anything but. In fact, she has a saying: “Drinking wine is sexy, making wine is messy.”

“Making wine is much more physical and not very glamorous than (compared) to the rest of the wine industry,” she said. “Wine tasting, you get dressed up and super fancy and maybe even snobby. Making wine is much more of an agricultural method.”

Despite the messiness, Howard said it is all worth it in the end. Even with the ongoing drought, being on Solano Irrigation District water has allowed the grapes to remain nourished. Barring any potential smoke from wildfires, she is feeling very optimistic.

“The quality of fruit we’re seeing out there is superb,” she said. “The intense flavor is the most we’ve seen in a long time. The bunch size is on the smaller side, which means the flavor’s more intense, so we’re anticipating a really good year.”