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OAK ALTERNATIVES Winemaker Interview Steve Pessagno Engineer-turned-vintner speaks candidly about the use of oak barrel alternatives CALIFORNIA Santa Cruz Monterey S 46 W in es & V i ne s APR I L 2 013 NV Pessagno Winery By Laurie Daniel teve Pessagno, proprietor of Pessagno Winery in California's Monterey County, grew up around wine. His grandfather, a rancher in the Santa Clara Valley, taught him to make Zinfandel when he was a teen. But he didn't pursue wine as a career at first. Instead, Pessagno earned a degree in engineering from Santa Clara University in 1980 and worked in the field of combustion kinetics. But he continued to make wine at home, and the hobby eventually took over. In 1982, he took some time off to work at Kirigin Cellars in Gilroy, Calif. The experience was enough to prompt Pessagno to quit engineering and get a degree in fermentation science at California State University, Fresno, in 1986. He went on to become winemaker at Jekel Winery and Lockwood Vineyards, both in Monterey County. He started Pessagno Winery in 1999 as a side project and left Lockwood in 2004 to work on the label full time. Pessagno is on the boards of the Monterey County Vintners and Growers Association and the Santa Lucia Highlands Wine Artisans. Wines & Vines: How did you get started working with barrel alternatives? Steve Pessagno: It was in 1983, while I was at Kirigin Cellars, that I met Bob Rogers of Custom Cooperage. He was teaching classes at the Napa Valley School of Cellaring on barrel care and maintenance. He had just patented an innovative barrel-insert concept that was very intriguing to me, and he called this second company Innerstave. Having been a research engineer in a previous life, I had to try it out. Bob and I did quite a bit of research on various oak types— primarily French—and I presented phenolic extraction results at ASEV in 1986. The experiment was to take a relatively neutral Chardonnay and then add barrel stave inserts from four forests (Vosges, Limousin, Tronçais and American) at two toast levels and age them for three months in five-gallon kegs. After the initial aging period, we saved the samples and then added more of the base wine for three more months. All the wines were evaluated for phenolic extraction and revealed very different rates of oak extraction. We gathered a group of winemakers for a blind tasting, and we all came away with our own impressions of what wood/toast levels we preferred for our wines. We found that oak alternatives, when used properly, could come close to new barrels, if not exceed them in consistency. As a result, they have been an integral part of my winemaking for the past 30 years. W&V: Now that you have your own label focusing on high-end wines, why do you continue to use staves? Pessagno: Of course we buy new barrels, but often times we opt for restaving flavor-neutral barrels. When I'm asked about Fresno Pacific Ocean Paso Robles CALIFORNIA Steve Pessagno worked at Kirigin Cellars, Jekel Winery and Lockwood Vineyards before leaving to work on his own label full time. the role barrels play in winemaking, I simplify my answer by saying that barrels have two primary functions: slowly add oxygen to wine and impart wood flavor. The oxidative part of the barrel doesn't change substantially over a 10-year lifespan, but oak flavor is depleted at about 50% for every use. Hence, why would you throw out a perfectly good barrel after four years when you could retrofit the inside with new oak at a fraction of the cost? From an environmental perspective, barrel staving is extremely environmentally friendly, and we find the quality is very consistent. Due to the type of oak species in France, only hand-split heartwood can be used in barrel making. Between shaping the barrel staves and sanding/milling the wood for barrels, there is