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wi n e m a ki n g mail-order customers. The Lockwood Vineyard was planted to some of everything, including what Pessagno called "some odd choices." "At a time when few people had ever heard of Sémillon," he remembered, "we were making it in two different styles." Pessagno knew this was not the way to make quality wine, on any scale, and the project was losing money to boot. Starting in 1992, the vineyard was replanted with Bordeaux and RhÔne varieties, the winemaking got in gear, and by the end of the decade Lockwood was pumping out 80,000 cases per year of very good wine—with a good deal of it selling (this was a decade ago) for $30-$50 a bottle. The first time I met Pessagno was at an all-day press session hosted by a handful of Monterey labels (my memory tells me they were styling themselves as the Monterey Quality Alliance) determined to tell the world that Monterey could make great wine and banish forever its reputation for under-ripe, "veggie" Cabernet. The crew included the founders and/or winemakers from Morgan, Talbott, Chalone, Bernardus and maybe a couple others, as well as a slide show by Leo McCloskey (there's that name again) showing how Monterey Chardonnay had the perfect profile to go big time. Starting with the 1999 vintage, Pessagno began making wines under his own self-named label, and in 2005 he turned to its production full-time. He never dropped that pursuit of quality, and he never forgot that the way to build his brand was to build his region. He did a stint as a county planning commissioner, arguing that the wine industry was an asset for the area, not a nuisance; he helped found the Wine Artisans of the Santa Lucia Highlands, dedicated to He never dropped that pursuit of quality, and he never forgot that the way to build his brand was to build his region. advancing and popularizing that winegrowing area; he helped pull together the River Road Wine Trail, on which he was finally able to build his own winery. His hospitality was boundless; I will forever kick myself for never getting to one of his legendary paella feasts. Even though Pessagno wasn't a professional writer, he came pretty close to penning his own epitaph in that June column: "2012 marked my 30th harvest as a winemaker. I don't have to tell my winemaking colleagues that this is the one profession that makes your non-winemaking friends envious. You are never bored, you make decisions on the spot every day, you drink great wines and eat well, you're always learning something, and you meet the most interesting people—many of whom become good friends." Tim Patterson is the author of "Home Winemaking for Dummies." He writes about wine and makes his own in Berkeley, Calif. Years of experience as a journalist, combined with a contrarian streak, make him interested in getting to the bottom of wine stories, casting a critical eye on conventional wisdom in the process. S U P P O RT R E S E A R C H & W I N E I N D U S T RY N E E D S T H R OUG H T H E AMERICAN VINEYARD FOUNDATION Finding Solutions Through Research Latest wine news u Live comments u Data Center u Archive search u NEWS SITE WWW.WINESANDVINES.COM 70 W in e s & V i ne s SE PT E MBE R 20 13 For a wealth of useful viticulture and enology research and information, visit AVF.org, iv.ucdavis.edu, enologyaccess.org, or ngwi.org. AMERICAN VINEYARD FOUNDATION P.O. Box 5779, Napa, CA., 94581 • T: (707) 252-6911 • Email info@avf.org. Visit our Web site at www.avf.org for information on funding and current research projects