NEWBIE INTRO Pezzato

Greetings Berserkers!

Pezzato is thrilled to be participating in our first BerserkerDay.

About us:

I started Pezzato in 2018 (our inaugural vintage) with my wife, Andrea. It was with much coaxing from my winemaking mentor, Russell Bevan, that we took the plunge and began sourcing our own fruit. Our goals from day one have been to:

1. Partner with growers who align with our belief that high-quality winemaking starts in the vineyard and who allow us to control farming inputs from pruning through harvest.

2. Produce a single wine every vintage, a Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, allowing us to put 100% of our effort and attention into the outcome of that wine.

3. Craft a wine that is fun and provides pleasure. For us, this means that Pezzato should have a vibrancy and verve out of the bottle, in-check tannins and layers of aromatic and flavor components that continue to evolve as the wine opens up in your glass.

4. Create a wine that punches above its weight class and can be enjoyed by our family and friends. For us, this means producing a wine that over-delivers on quality, while keeping our price point affordable. We love finding great QPR wines!

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I started my career in wine working for a high-end grape grower and vineyard developer, Premier Pacific Vineyards. I had the incredible opportunity to grow wine for some of the top wineries on the west coast of California and to work with some amazing vineyard sites, such as Gap’s Crown, Sugarloaf Mountain, Bentrock, Sun Chase, Radian, Nathan Coombs, Goldrock Estate, Walala, Rita’s Crown and many more.

In working with these sites, I was responsible for all winery relations and had the unique position of being able to work hand-in-hand with some incredibly talented winemakers. I counted as partners in our winegrowing efforts the likes of Paul Hobbs, Philippe Melka, Jesse Katz, Julien Fayard, Michael Browne, James Hall, Russell Bevan, James MacPhail, Morgan Clendenen, Brian Babcock, Ken Brown, Stephanie Putnam, Mike Smith and so many more.

After a slight detour through the tech scene in Silicon Valley, the call of wine was too great and I moved back, but this time to the winery side of things, working with my mentor Russell Bevan. For my ‘day job’ I spent four vintages as the Director of Winemaking at Tench Vineyards. I am now off on a new endeavour helping to build and run a new winery facility for two of Russell’s clients, The Lerner Project and Napa Jack Winery.

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Andrea has never been far from wine country, having grown up in the Willamette Valley and then studying at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA. Immediately after graduation, Andrea moved to Napa for an internship with Premier Pacific Vineyards, which turned into a full time job. Following that, she moved to San Francisco, where she gained experience in finance, sales operations and business analytics across a variety of industries, including ag tech, retail, and residential solar. In 2017, we both left our jobs and traveled in Southeast Asia for 3+ months. Upon our return, we made the very intentional decision to follow our passion and move back to wine country. Andrea worked for two years as the Director of Strategy & Analytics at Kosta Browne, responsible for the industry-leading allocation sales model, and is now the Director of DTC for DuMOL Winery.

She and I spend our “free time” (ha!) wrangling 1-year-old Ethan at our home in Napa, CA.

You can read more about our journey and Pezzato here: Pezzato Wine

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Michael and Andrea Savaiano

Thanks Michael. Glad to have you participating. Your ‘18 sounds delicious and congrats on the JD review.

Owen, thank you! We’re incredibly humbled by Jeb’s review and kind words on the wine. We’ve had a lot of amazing cheerleaders since we’ve embarked on the Pezzato journey and Jeb has definitely been one of them. We’re looking forward to seeing the final wine score, only a barrel score has been published, coming out late next week with his review of the Napa 2018’s. I’m slightly biased (LOL) but think that the time in bottle has really helped the 2018 Pezzato come into its own.

I didn’t post the Jeb score and writeup in this thread, it’ll be in our BD offer thread, but if anyone is interested in seeing it just let me know and I’ll post it up here.

Cheers,

Michael

I purchased and tasted this wine in December and wanted to share my initial thoughts with my fellow Berserkers. First off, Michael is a great guy who offers first class customer service. He immediately responded to my request and wine was shipped within just a couple of days. As for the wine itself, it is a great inaugural offering in my opinion that will only get better with some cellaring. I went ahead and posted a brief tasting note on CellarTracker if you’re interested (https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=3788546&searchId=E563AE46%23selected%253DW3788546_97_K25d375f0b3d8d84c127d5c8ef9e0f84d). Cheers!

Chris, thank you so much for your kind words. We’ve put our blood, sweat and tears into Pezzato and your feedback makes all of that completely worth it. Andrea and I are so thrilled that you enjoyed the wine.

Cheers,

Michael

I also purchased / tasted a bottle of the inaugural release back in December and agree fully with Chris’ notes. I didn’t have the patience to decant, but did find myself enjoying the wine even more the second day. It was more approachable than many young Napa cabs and I’m excited to see how this wine evolves.

Andrew, thank you for your note! Regarding the approachability of the 2018 Pezzato, we’re really trying to craft a wine that has softer tannins and, related to that, a velvety or supple mouthfeel. We put a lot of effort into this both in the vineyard and winery. Because of this I think that often times the wine shows well right out of the gate even though it’s a relatively young vintage.

I totally agree with your comment about the wine opening up more on day 2. I’ll let the wine sit in glass for a few days sometimes and marvel at how it changes over the course of time.

Cheers,

Michael

We’ve received some emails with shipping questions. We’ll post more info in our offer thread but we’re able to ship to almost any state, with the exception of Utah and Mississippi.

What is the vineyard these come from?

Hi Josh,

Here’s how it’s characterized in the offer that everyone will be able to see tomorrow (and how I usually describe where the vineyard is to folks):

The 2018 Pezzato Cabernet Sauvignon is from a single vineyard in the eastern bench of Oakville. We’re fortunate to call Screaming Eagle, Phelps Backus, Tench and Bond St. Eden our neighbors, all just a stone’s throw away. It’s a truly magical neighborhood in which I feel honored to be able to grow wine.

For a number of reasons, my agreement with the family with whom I partner on the fruit is that I will not use their vineyard name in conjunction with my wine.

Cheers,

Michael

Thanks. I’ve come to like how Burgundy does things. So it’s a village wine that is made of declassified grand cru fruit?

Josh, interesting way to put it. I typically try to avoid the French to California comparisons but yes, you could say that.