Meet Our Winemakers - Introducing Cindy Cosco of Passaggio Wines

The region’s traditional Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are on the list, too, but the Chardonnay is made in the less common unoaked style. Winemaker Cindy Cosco likes experiments that go against the grain.

After she left a career in law enforcement for a fresh start in California, Cosco enrolled in enology courses and started working in the lab at Chateau St. Jean. She then honed her winemaking skills––and her knack for managing a cellar full of small-lot batches from a diverse list of vineyards––when her offbeat wine interests landed her a custom-crush gig. It was the perfect foundation to launch her own label. Today, Passaggio Wines sources from small vineyards across the state to make balanced, food-friendly wines that show off the less-traveled side of California wine.

Cosco took time just before harvesting her last fruit of the season (she’s making Nebbiolo this year) to tell her story and share the names of some of the other great women in wine who have mentored her along the way.

Tell us about your background and your path to winemaking. Any early signs that you’d choose a wine career?
Well, there are early memories of my grandfather making wine in the basement, but it didn’t occur to me at the time that that’s what I’d be doing [laughs]. I worked in law enforcement in Virginia for 15 years. I decided to get out of that, and came out to California––I actually followed somebody out here. I wanted to get into the wine industry, but I didn’t know what that meant for me.

I started working at Chateau St. Jean and taking enology classes over at Napa Valley College. That’s when I finally realized I wanted to make wine. There was a custom-crush facility in San Francisco called Crushpad, and I went to their open house and told their winemaker I wanted to make Chardonnay. This was in 2007 and he was excited about that, and at the same time offered me a job. I started working for them, and launched Passaggio wines that year.

Any memorable bottles that switched on a light for you?
I tasted Iron Horse’s 2004 or 2005 unoaked Chardonnay and I said, that’s what I’d like to make. It made an impression on me at that point and I wanted to go toward those stainless-steel whites. I wanted to do something different. In 2007, unoaked Chardonnays were not all that popular. I liked stainless-steel whites, and there’s Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, but there wasn’t really stainless-steel Chardonnay. That’s why I went in that direction.

It strikes me that working in custom-crush would be a great way to learn a lot about wine production very quickly. How did it prepare you to start your own label?
When I started working for Crushpad it was a total education in and of itself. We had, I think, five winemakers on staff, and they each had their own philosophy of winemaking. Everybody was different, which was very cool to watch and see. I had four people in the lab, and trying to keep up with those winemakers and whatever they wanted to do was very, very difficult, because Crushpad had a brand-new concept where clients could come and make one barrel of wine. So I had 2,000 barrels, each one its own lot of wine. I had to analyze each barrel every month. It was a big job, but I learned so much. I think I learned a lot more about faults in wine than the regular things you should be learning about [laughs].

Did your law enforcement background help you manage all those wines and personalities?
Yeah, in law enforcement you have to be kind of OCD, very organized. So it definitely prepared me for that.

You source fruit from so many interesting sites. Tell us about some of the vineyards you work with.
I like to source fruit from smaller growers, so that’s most of the vineyards I’ve worked with. I get the more personalized version of picking fruit, talking to the grower, making those relationships. That’s more important to me than getting fruit from a vineyard that’s thousands of acres, where you’re not really as involved in making a relationship with the grower. So that’s the common thread––I like the smaller vineyards.

I source from two vineyards right now. There’s John Albini’s vineyard, which is right in Sonoma Valley and is really interesting. He actually grows several different varieties and it’s a really small vineyard. For instance I just brought in some Fiano, and I only got about a ton. There’s Pinot Grigio on the property, Sauvignon Blanc, Nebbiolo, Cabernet Franc. I like that, I like to be able to have a ton or two of things like that. And then I get the Chardonnay from Carneros in Sonoma. And it’s interesting, the AVAs are so weird there, you could actually call it Sonoma Coast, but really this one is Carneros so that’s what I call it. [The Sonoma Coast appellation overlaps several other AVAs, including the much smaller Carneros.]