The rise of ‘white Pinot Noir’ in the Pacific Northwest

Can a black grape make a white wine? Although the question might seem odd, winemakers have been working with this idea for hundreds of years.

While black/red grapes have dark skins, which is responsible for the colour when making red wine, most (though not all) have white flesh – and therefore white juice. This allows the production of white wines made from black grapes by quickly and gently pressing the grape and avoiding colour extraction.

The practice of using red grapes in still white wine production has been known for centuries, and wines made this way are often referred to as ‘blanc de noir’ (literally ‘white from black’).

Though an established style, it’s not a common one. The white Merlots made in Switzerland’s Lugano region and the use of Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier to make white Champagne, are among the most notable and famous examples.

But there’s a growing movement based around this concept in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

From the ashes

In Oregon’s Willamette Valley, the relatively cool climate provides ideal conditions for Pinot Noir. Here, the grape is the leading variety, accounting for 60% of the overall planted acreage, according to the Oregon Wine Board.

However, the massive wildfires in 2020 and the fear that skins would retain smoke taint gave this new white wine production a boost, as it gave winemakers an outlet to salvage some of the black grapes from the difficult harvest by just using the white juice.​

The result has been a growing number of ‘white Pinot Noirs’ that, rather than fading away as a one-off expediency, have become fixtures on winery line-ups.

Styles are varied, though many winemakers opt to age theirs in barrel for six to seven months before bottling – which means they’re ready in time for tastings in the spring.

In general, the profile is a clean, bright palate with notes of green apple, mandarin, and honeydew, with balanced minerality and acidity.

A new style for Oregon Pinot Noir

Tony Rynders, the co-founder of Tendril Cellars, was among the first winemakers to make white Pinot Noir in Oregon – long before the 2020 fires in fact.

While he was working at Domain Serene, he met a winemaker from Italy at the International Pinot Noir Celebration in 2004, who told him about the white Pinot Noir production in his region.

‘When he was describing it, the light bulb just went off for me. He didn’t have the wine with him, and I never tasted it, but I thought that it was cool and I wanted to make one,’ said Rynders.

It has become one of the signature wines, and one that Rynders continued to make at Tendril after departing Domaine Serene in 2008. At Tendril Cellars, he calls it ‘Pretender’ because, ‘it’s Pinot Noir, but it pretends to be a white wine’, and sells around 175 cases a year – nearly all of it direct from the cellar door.

He continues: ‘With Pretender, we pick the grapes at full maturity when the fruit is just ripe enough to make red wine. That is how we achieve the rich texture of this wine.’

Rynders does partial pressing and yields only about 60% of the juice used to make the wine. The juice maintains the grapes’ natural acidity and preserves the pH. He then matures the wine in neutral French barrels for 16 months, longer than other producers in the region.

During that period, the wine loses whatever colour it might have acquired during pressing. ‘By not having any poppable colour in our white Pinot Noir allows us to add more shelf life to the wine, a little more of the ageing potential. If there is a colour in these wines, they don’t age as well as they could,’ Rynders explains.

He decided to go even further and officially obtain approval for White Pinot Noir on the label by lobbying the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.

In 2004, with the first vintage of the wine, he presented the idea to the agency and explained what it was and how it was made. ‘It didn’t really fit into a neat box for them. They initially weren’t going to let us use the term “White Pinot Noir” until I was able to convince them that it was Pinot Noir, just made as a white wine; So it is a tangent of Pinot Noir,’ Rynders remembers.

Still from sparkling

White Pinot Noir is one of the additions that another winemaker in Willamette Valley, Jessica Mozeico, introduced to Et Fille Wines in 2022.

‘It was never on my radar, and I was vaguely familiar with the concept,’ says Mozeico. ‘However, when I started making sparkling wine, I loved the base wine from our Pinot. I thought if I like the aromatics and acidity of this base wine, why not make it into a still wine?’

Mozeico uses the same block of Pinot Noir grapes for rosé and sparkling wine planted in 2003. This side of the vineyard is cropped more heavily to prevent fast maturity and the leaves are left to provide shade.

The grapes for rosé and white Pinot Noir are harvested at the same time. At the winery, these two wines are processed almost identically.

When pressed, Mozeico seeks free-run juice to minimise skin contact. There have been years when she refused to make a white Pinot because she couldn’t drop the colour.

‘There are certain things that I am looking for in this wine,’ says Mozeico, ‘I am looking for white colour, stone fruit aromatics, nectarine, peach, and some early strawberries. But if it starts to get beyond that, I put it in the rosé category.’

A Washington white wine maverick

In Washington State’s Columbia Valley, there aren’t many producers working with Pinot Noir.

The region is largely characterised by hot growing conditions and is a preferred terroir for Bordeaux varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and has become well known for Syrah.

Massalto works with one of the few vineyards to grow the grape there, and it’s the only winery using it to make white wine.

‘It reminds me of a combination of Viognier and Chardonnay. Part of that is the barrel fermentation. But with the notes of stone fruits and citrus, Pinot Noir makes me think of a white wine, actually,’ says Matías Kúsulas, the co-founder of Massalto Wine.

After tasting a white Pinot in Oregon in 2018, Kúsulas and his business partner, Chef Michael Ruhland, decided to make one at Massalto from fruit grown at Solaksen Vineyard, part of the Lawrence Estate Vineyards, where Kúsulas makes the wines at Gård.

Massalto is becoming known for its unorthodox and innovative approach to winemaking (using techniques like pre-and/or extended post-fermentation maceration), evident in the white Pinot Noir.

Along with playing with the harvest time to further drive certain flavours in the wine, in the cellar, Kúsulas tinkers further, pressing whole bunches at different pressures, and choosing between partial and no malolactic fermentation.

All of this experimenting took the winemaker through several harvests before Kúsulas achieved the bold style he sought; something that ‘separates them from the others,’ he says.

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The 2020 vintage eventually gave him what he was looking for.

Unlike previous years, the fruit was left to hang longer. After pressing, the juice went straight to the barrel and produced a completely different profile than they expected for white Pinot Noir. ‘Very rich, tons of stone fruit with a little bit of citrus, the viscosity, the texture was amazing! It was actually a very serious wine,’ says Kúsulas.

This became the way Massalto makes its white Pinot Noir called Facade. The label’s artwork is a woman with a mask, partially covering her face, like this red grape, pretending to be something else.

A selection of white Pinot Noir:

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