Meet the Winemakers: Angelo Pera

Backstage Winery, Oak Knoll District, Napa Valley. Answered in writing, October 27, 2026.

Every day at Backstage, in the old Andretti winery off Big Ranch Road where the family moved its production a few years ago, Angelo Pera walks through the barrel room and smells, looking for the one barrel that has started to go off. There are sensors in his cellar that will send Brix and temperature to his phone, and he has spent years looking for a machine that can do what his nose does without finding one, so he still makes the walk, because a problem in a single barrel that nobody catches has a way of getting into the next one.

This October the walk came at the end of a long harvest. On the afternoon of the twenty-seventh, a few minutes after two, his answers to my twenty questions arrived in my inbox with a short note on top. It had been a crazy week, he wrote, and they had finally pressed the very last of their 2026 fruit.

He learned the trade in the early 1990s, fresh out of business school, from winemakers in Napa and in Tuscany, and he credits the Napa side with the precision and the science and the Italians with the idea that wine belongs at the table with family and that nobody rushes it. His first vintage was 1994. Two years later a customer asked him for a very sweet wine, and he did the math, bottled it, and two weeks after that heard the corks start popping because the wine had begun fermenting again in the bottle. The whole lot was lost, and more than thirty years later he still does not like making sweet wine.

In 2010 he bought Mountain View Winery, a California brand that dates to 1978, and two years later made the first vintage under the Backstage name, small lots from single vineyards, most of them Cabernet Sauvignon. It is a family operation in the plainest sense. His daughter, Olivia, is his assistant winemaker, and in his telling she has gone from asking him why they do something to telling him when he is about to do it wrong. His son, Matt, runs the hospitality side. The wine Angelo would pour for a stranger comes from the Green Room Vineyard on Howell Mountain, which he first made in 2013, and the decision about when to pick it gets made a week before harvest, with Angelo standing in the rows chewing grape seeds to see whether they have turned brown and nutty yet.

He answered in writing rather than on a recording. These are his answers to the twenty questions every winemaker in this series is asked.

1. Who taught you?

I wish I could give you one name, but I learned the way a lot of us did in the early '90s: from many hands. I picked it up from several winemakers here in Napa, and from winemakers in Tuscany. The Napa winemakers taught me precision and the science. The Italians taught me that wine belongs at the table, with family, and that you don't rush it. If I'm honest, I'm a blend of both.

I was first inspired by Robert Mondavi. Although he wasn't a winemaker, he drew me into winemaking through Opus One, which was the first high-quality wine I had ever tried. I wanted to make a wine like it. I was also inspired by Gianfranco Soldera and his Brunello di Montalcino. I was taken with the structure of those wines.

2. Who have you taught, and where are they now?

My daughter, Olivia. She's my assistant winemaker at Backstage now. She grew up around the cellar, and I've watched her go from asking why we do something to telling me when I'm about to do it wrong. That's the moment you know the teaching took. She's now part of many of our final decisions before bottling, because she has the palate to make a well-balanced wine. More importantly, she enjoys it.

3. Is there a vintage you date your life by?

1994, my first vintage, and 2012, my first vintage at Backstage. Everything in between was learning, and everything since has been building something of our own. I'd add 2013, the first vintage from our Green Room Vineyard on Howell Mountain, which turned out to be one of the best wines we've ever made. That wine earned my first 97-point rating, and every year I'm trying to improve on it.

4. What's changed in the trade since you started that someone new would walk right past?

When I started, you sold wine by showing up. You drove to the restaurant, sat down with the owner or the sommelier, opened a bottle and talked. The relationship was the sale. Today wine sells on technical data and reviews: the score, the tech sheet, the alcohol, the oak regimen, a listing online. A new hire assumes that's how it's always worked. They'd never guess that a handshake and a shared bottle used to move more wine than any spec sheet.

5. Walk me through a typical harvest day at the peak.

• Midnight to 5 a.m.: Night pick. The fruit comes in cold, which protects it. Someone is always at the vineyard and someone at the crush pad.
• 5 to 7 a.m.: Fruit arrives. Sorting, destemming, into tank, SO₂ and enzymes. Coffee happens in between.
• 7 to 9 a.m.: Brix and temperature on every tank. Taste every fermenter. Decide the day's pump-overs and punch-downs.
• 9 a.m. to noon: Lab work, yeast and nutrient additions, juice panels. Calls with growers about what's next to pick. Make sure all the machinery is working and the supplies are stocked.
• Noon to 3 p.m.: Walk the grounds and visit with guests. Taste wines. Talk with staff.
• 3 to 6 p.m.: Second round of pump-overs, pressing whatever is ready, barrel work.
• 6 to 9 p.m.: Last Brix and temperature checks, cleaning, which is half of winemaking, and planning tomorrow.
• Somewhere in there: Sleep, if you're lucky.

6. What decision do you make that you can't fully explain to someone else?

When to pick, and when to press. The numbers get you close: Brix, pH, acid. But the final call comes from tasting the seeds and skins in the vineyard, or a glass of wine on the skins in the tank. One day the tannins feel a little rough, and the next day they've rounded off. I can describe what I'm looking for, but the moment itself is something you learn by doing it a few hundred times.

For more than thirty years I've been trying to make the perfect wine. Every year brings its own challenges, and that's what we learn to adjust for. But a wine doesn't reach its highest potential from one or two big decisions. It comes from about a hundred little ones added together.

7. Tell me about a harvest that went wrong.

In 2020 we had fires through much of Napa Valley. It was awful. The smoke was so thick you could barely see the hillsides. We were very fortunate that none of our vineyards burned, but the smoke settled in and damaged all of our grapes, and we didn't harvest any that year. It was heartbreaking. If it hadn't been for the smoke, the grapes that year were growing ideally. I kept thinking that we had lost a fantastic vintage.

8. Who's the legend around the winery?

In my early years at Backstage I hired a winemaking consultant, Philip Zorn, to oversee my decisions and keep me on track. Philip had an uncanny ability to ask the right questions even when he wasn't here. "Did you smell every barrel today?" He was my sounding board whenever I wanted to try something new.

9. Is there something that happens at the end of crush every year?

After crush we still have about another month of long, hard days. Barrels have to be emptied, moved, racked, and cleaned. Wines have to finish fermentation and malolactic fermentation. Wines from previous years have to be bottled, and guests are still coming every day. Once all of that ends, usually in December, it gets quiet, and our family goes somewhere warm. Over the years we've gone to Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico, and the Caribbean. It's time to decompress and relax. We surf or golf during the day and enjoy wine at night.

10. What do people outside the trade always get wrong?

They think it's romantic: tasting wine in the sun, walking the vines at sunset. Some of it is. But much of the job is cleaning, lifting, hauling hoses, checking numbers at 5 a.m., and making decisions with incomplete information while the weather does what it wants. The romance is real, but it's earned with a lot of very unglamorous work.

People also assume the word Napa on the label automatically means quality. It can, but there is a lot of detailed work in the winemaking that makes it good, and the details can't be skipped.

11. What's the first thing you got wrong, and who caught it?

In 1996, while I was still learning, I was asked to make a sweet wine from one particular lot for a customer who wanted very high residual sugar. I did my calculations and made what was going to be a very sweet wine. Two weeks after bottling, the corks started popping, because the wine had re-fermented in the bottle. I hadn't fully stopped the yeast, and the entire lot was ruined. It was an awful experience. The silver lining is that I learned a good lesson, and I've never had that problem since. To this day I don't like making sweet wines, and I'm a little afraid of them.

12. Is there something you still do the way you were taught, even though a faster way exists?

Tasting every tank, every day, myself. We have lab numbers and sensors that can tell me Brix and temperature from my phone. But the numbers don't tell you when a fermentation smells a little off, or when the tannins have turned. My Italian teachers would put a glass in your hand and say, "Taste it." I still do.

13. What were you taught that you've since stopped doing?

I was taught to adjust everything with chemicals or products. Too much acidity, too flabby, too boring, there's a winemaking product to fix it. I learned how to use those things, but I've since decided not to. I use gravity instead of fining agents. I use new oak barrels instead of oak chips. I pay close attention to the farming and the harvest decisions, rather than picking by the numbers for Brix and pH, so that I don't have to intervene later. I want to make my wine with little or no manipulation.

14. Is there a tank or a piece of equipment around here that has a name?

No piece of our equipment has a name. When something stops working or becomes obsolete, we replace it. But I still use my nose as a tool. Every day I walk through the barrel room and smell, usually looking for off scents. To this day I haven't found a machine that can do that like my nose can. If a problem inside a barrel goes undetected, it can spread. If the tool has a name, I'd say it's Angelo's nose.

15. When someone who knows nothing about wine walks in, what do they already know that you can build on?

They already know how fruit tastes when it's ripe and when it isn't. They know the difference between a fresh cherry and cherry jam, between coffee and chocolate, between a cedar closet and a leather jacket. Wine tasting is just paying attention to things you've already experienced. I tell people they don't need new vocabulary. They need to trust what they already know.

16. When someone pours your wine for a stranger, what do they need to know that isn't in the tasting notes?

That a small family made it. That the person who farmed and harvested the grapes is the same person who answers the phone at the winery. And that my wine is meant to be shared over a meal, not analyzed. Pour it, then let people talk.

17. What would someone have to watch you do to understand this wine?

Walk the Green Room Vineyard on Howell Mountain with me a week before harvest and watch me chew on grape seeds. That's where the wine is decided: whether the seeds are brown and nutty or still green and bitter. Nobody sees that part, and the glass can't show it, but every bottle starts there.

18. What's your favorite wine that you don't make?

Brunello di Montalcino. It's made from a local clone of Sangiovese in the hills around the town of Montalcino. The winemakers take their time and age the wine properly, usually five or six years, before they release it. There's no rushing a world-class wine, and Brunello shows what patience can do.

19. When you make a great one, do you know right away?

Usually not right away. You get a hint in the fermenter, but you really know in barrel, a year or so in, when you taste it and it stops you for a second. With our 2013 Green Room Cabernet, our first from that vineyard, I knew. It later earned 97 points, but I'd had the feeling long before the score. I've been chasing a wine that earns 99 points, and every year I hope it will happen. Everything has to cooperate for it.

20. One pour, one stranger. Which wine, and what do you say before they taste it?

The Backstage Green Room Cabernet Sauvignon. Before they taste it, I'd say: "This comes from a small mountain vineyard where we made our first wine in 2013. It's a family wine. My daughter makes it with me now. Don't think about it too hard. Just tell me what it reminds you of."

Angelo Pera answered the twenty questions in writing on October 27, 2026, the week Backstage pressed the last of its 2026 fruit. His answers are edited lightly for length and clarity.