Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/152772
(and is visibly swelling), it will eventually blow if someone doesn't stop the pump. Train your crush staff to keep an eye (and ear) out for processing sights and sounds that are abnormal. I can tell you that when the hose ruptures it will launch grapes over the top of a 32-foot tall building." These are clearly the life lessons of a production winemaker, someone who moved a lot of grapes through a lot of presses and tanks and barrels and hoses. I soon learned that Steve's original training was as a mechanical engineer—in later life, he often referred to himself as a "recovering engineer"—and he brought an engineer's skepticism and do-it-yourself-ism to winemaking as well. He was one of those winemakers who never met a tank he didn't want to customize. He had short patience for blather and nonsense, and a lifelong habit of asking why he should believe this or that piece of conventional wisdom. I got an entire column out of one of his "show me" stunts. Accepted wine dogma tells us that fine wines can only be made in small batches, and Steve could not for the life of him figure out why the same grapes would fare worse in a larger fermentor, all else being equal. So after a bet with Leo McCloskey of Enologix, whose company spe- Steve Pessagno gets attention from his dog, Keno. cializes in slicing and dicing the attributes of fine wines, Steve rigged up a trial at Lockwood, where he had plenty of tanks to play with. Side by side, he fermented the same Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in two fermentors of the same width-to-height ratio, one holding 14 tons, one holding 105 tons, with the same yeast, similar pump-over regimens and an elaborate system of sensors to make sure temperatures were uniform. When they ran the results through Enologix's battery of analytical tests, sure enough, the big tank won—barely, but it won. A quality guy For all his skill at large-scale production winemaking, Pessagno was a quality guy, in every meaning of the term. When he took over at Lockwood in 1991, the winery was saddled with a peculiar business model that focused on dozens and dozens of small-batch custom bottlings for restaurants and even NEW Practical Winery Library! Single-subject articles on a wide range of topics From the archives of Practical Winery & Vineyard PracticalWineryLibrary.com Win es & Vin es SEPT EM B ER 20 13 69