Nurturing the Wine

At Tolosa, we believe the role of the winemaker is to reveal the character of the wine.  It starts in the vineyards, of course.  There, we use cutting-edge technology, such as infrared vigour mapping and detailed soil exploration, to better understand the vineyard and even the individual vines.  This allows our vineyard team to pinpoint the attention needed throughout the growing cycle.  At harvest, the grapes are picked by hand in the cool, dark hours of the morning and transported to the winery in small bins to avoid undue pressure on the fruit. 

At the winery, the grapes are sorted for color, size and ripeness using a state-of-the-art optical sorting machine to ensure only the best fruit makes it into our most-prized wines.  Stainless steel rectangular-shaped tanks create a thinner cap of grape skins, allowing more of the juice to have contact with the pumace for flavor extraction and gentler fermentation.  Pinot Noir grapes are pressed in a small-lot basket press for the gentlest pressing process.  Our separate warm barrel fermentation room allows for fine-tuned guidance of the fermentation process.  Our winemakers select barrel by barrel in the blending process to compose wines that are nuanced, complex and balanced.

The attention to detail means more work and lower yields but the character of Edna Valley shines through.