The Art of Sparkling | Kyle Altomare | Barrels and Roots

In this episode of Barrels and Roots, I sit down with winemaker Kyle Altomare from Gloria Ferrer for a conversation about sparkling wine, winemaking, mentorship, and the deeper craft behind making something truly memorable. 

We talk about what makes a glass of sparkling wine feel alive, why tension, personality, and balance matter so much, and how great wine keeps you coming back for another sip. Kyle shares how winemakers grow from mastering technique to learning how to let go, trust instinct, and create wines with soul instead of just technical perfection. We also get into food pairings, including why aged blanc de blancs with ribeye steak can be an elite match, and why sparkling wine deserves way more respect at the table. Beyond wine itself, this episode explores the role of community, leadership, mentorship, creativity, and how tradition can evolve without losing its identity. This is a conversation about sparkling wine, yes, but also about craftsmanship, curiosity, and what it means to create something that brings people joy and stays with them long after the glass is empty. 

What is one bottle, or even one meal, that stayed with you because it felt truly memorable?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Sparkling wine is a master of pairing across the board because we're working with acidity levels that are much more elevated, right? So when chefs are trying to pair, they're always looking for these complementary or um, you know, opposing factors, right? Salty and sweet. Or you're trying to match the level of sweetness together with your dessert and make it work, right? So you can either come up to the level where it's at, or you can try and go the opposite way. And that's kind of the general basics of food pairings. But with this, what you have is this elevated acidity that cuts through all that fat. Whereas with red wines, right, you're using tannin, you're using the structure of the wine to make that pairing work. But here, we're using the acidity, and what it leaves you with is just the most clean feeling on your palate because you don't have any tannin that's that's sticking to different parts of your mouth like tannin does. What you have is this beautifully rich and uncuous kind of umami texture from the steak and the fat. And then that's paired with the sparkling that has the same level of uncuousness because of the age. And then you get this crisp acidity that leaves your palate clean. And then you keep coming back for it's actually dangerous pairing because I find myself eating more and more and drinking more and more and more. Uh, but that's one of my favorite ones is AIDS, age blonde to blanc and red meat.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Welcome everyone back to the Barrels and Roots podcast. And I've got a really awesome guest with me today, special guest, because he was actually the one who helped me kick off barrels and roots. So thank you for taking a chance on me. And like as this keeps going, man, I really appreciate it. But uh, can you let people who don't know who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Yeah, absolutely. Uh thanks for having me on again, Sean. It's been really fun. Really happy to see this take off. My name's Kyle Altamari. I'm the winemaker for Gloria Frere. Um, and I handle all the winemaking uh at Gloria Frere, and we have a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

That's awesome. And we had a great conversation. We kicked it off the first time, and I was actually really glad to get you back in because it was all over the place, but it was really it was fun, man. But I wanted to ask you, there were so many questions I had that when we finished, I wanted to kind of keep going, which was one of the reasons I wanted to reach back out. And, you know, you're a winemaker, and it was such a great insight into the world of winemaking and what what kind of thought process has to go on as someone making wine. But I wanted I want to ask you this when you're not thinking like a winemaker and you just enjoying a glass of wine yourself, what what makes a glass of sparkling uh wine feel like just fun for you?

SPEAKER_00 2:28

That's it's gotta have it's gotta have tension, it's gotta have personality, and it's gotta just keep drawing me in, right? We've all had those wines where you know it it you you get so drawn in with the aromatics and you're so excited for this wine to take off, and then it just it kind of you take your first sip and then it kind of leaves you wanting more, right? And sometimes that's not a bad thing, right? You're sitting by maybe it's mood, maybe it's different, maybe you're by the pool and just want something to hang out with. But for wine, any wine, no matter what the situation is for me, it's gotta want me, keep me wanting to come back for a second sip. Um, and and the way you do that is to create wines that are it's kind of one thing that as a winemaker, you have to kind of disconnect a little bit. Um, because you know, we have you getting up to the level of being a winemaker, you're gathering all these different masteries, right? You know, you're working in a cellar, you're mastering all the cellar operations, you're working in the lab and you're mastering how to do the chemistry. And then you're starting to get into the business side of it and you're mastering how to do the business side. And then once you get to that leadership role, it's kind of about letting go of that control. And all the way through that technical process, you've been taught how to make technically perfect wines because that's your job getting up to up to the creative basis which a winemaker has. And you kind of have to disassociate yourself from the levels of mastery that you started with and go and and you take this new journey, um, which is really, really fun. So for me, it's about creating wines that are that are not technically perfect per se, um, but have a sense of soul, a sense of personality, a sense of intrigue. Um, and and two things.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

No, that's awesome, but there are two things that I haven't popped out. You literally just described the like the the story arc to like some of the best kung fu movies ever. You know, yeah, first you master this style. Next, you master this style, and then after that, you must synthesize it and let it all go. I was like, that's awesome, man.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Yeah, and speaking of kung fu, right? It's like, what's more dangerous? The the person who's mastered a thousand kicks or the person who has mastered one kick a thousand times, right? And that's kind of the dou quad, that's the difference in in when you you go from mastering a thousand different kicks on your way up to then your craft, and you have to master that thousands and thousands and thousands of times. But it's that one thing, and there's a little evolution to it, right? But it's about doing that same thing and building upon the process rather than just kind of trying to change it, right? It's always that evolution, not revolution, um, that we go through as winemakers.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

I love that. And there's something to be said for gaining that experience. But first of all, go back to uh one of the first points you had. Like, I know that that that that wanting more vibe. I I I've had so many glasses of wine that I drank it, like, that's good, that's lovely. I I enjoy that. But there's sometimes I'll I'll have a sip and I'll be like, whoa, what's going on there? That is that's I gotta I gotta have another sip of that, you know? And it's like it's this deeper stepping into it that you have to have. And I I'm never able to put my finger on it though, you know? And so it's always a, and maybe that's why I I started this podcast. So it's like I wanted to know that. But you when you're talking about going deeper too, um this, you know, I dude, I I I I'm a black belt in Japanese style jujitsu, uh, which is like judo, and we did a thousand throws, you know. And I met this one kid who was like, he was like, wow, you guys learned a lot of throws at your school. I was like, Yeah, man, we know a lot of different techniques. And he's like, I know one. And I was like, oh, tell me about that. And he was just really, really, really good at one. But once he got really good at it, he was able to kind of evolve it and vary it, but yet his go-to thing was still there. You know, he would skip you'd step this way and he's like, ah, I'm gonna get you. And you step this way. He's like, Ah, I'm gonna get you. But it was like this natural evolution of like, and that's one of the things I I got to go. I I've been learning leather working. I made this wallet for myself and my daughter, I helped her, right? And I helped her make a wallet, and I actually made I found a teacher in Vietnam who studied with the the the teacher from uh NMS, and he was like this like prodigy, and then he decided that he didn't want to work for MS, so he moved back to Vietnam and started his own brand. And it just it's a little boutique place. He's got this hole in the wall place, he doesn't make many bags, but the ones he makes are like just absolute baller, you know. He's like, Oh, I was like, Oh, that's a beautiful bag. How much does that cost? It's some new style he did. Yeah, yeah, he's like, it's ten thousand dollars. I was like, good lord, that's amazing. But yeah, yeah, he's so good, yeah, right? I was like, mmm, you know, so but one of the things that's fascinating about him is that he has his cuts are so perfect at this point in time because he has absolutely he has done this cut, you know, 10,000 times. And now it's just like uh cutting leather like is not easy. You're you're pulling it and the leather pulls with you. And so as you're you're cutting this line, you think it's gonna be straight, and you're like, yes, I'm doing it right this time, and then you pull it apart and the line's like this. So it's like to see someone who can just really get it right the first time, and that's that that the master, you know, and their technique is amazing, you know, and that's the feel, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:51

There's a feel, and I and it's why I fell in love with sparkling wine, both drinking it and making it, is you're taking wines that are picked so young, so early in the in the process. We're doing we're doing all our work when you know the grape is actually still loading sugar, which most still line makers don't even think about, right? Because they're getting to the end of sugar loading and then going past it and waiting for different flavors to develop. But we're doing all our work in this very quick curve that happens in the growing season. Um and it it's very rare that you find a single sparkling vineyard, one block that, or one vineyard entirely that is perfect across the board. Usually you can find a vineyard that's got amazing aromatics or you've got amazing texture on the palette. And the reason I fell in love with it is it's finding out how to put those things together that make more of a synergy and a symphony rather than just one singular expression that's perfect all around, which is a different style and a different type of winemaking. Both sparkling, it's all about how you put these things together. Um, and that's why when you get into some of these champagne houses, you know, it you're always working with many, many winemakers, different wines, right? When you think about uh some of the most famous famous houses um in general, they have these base wines going back 30 or 40 years, right? So how many hands touched it and how many people made these wines to come together and make something that is where the sum is greater than the parts that made it, um, is just so much fun. It's so cool to see.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

That's awesome. I um I read this this story one time about this family that was making sourdough, and I can't remember where, but I I think that their their starter, sourdough, went back almost like a hundred years, and I was just like blown away that that that the thing that they're using to generate this is like that old. And it's like that tradition, that mastery, it's just is fascinating. But like one of the cool things with sparkling wine that I was thinking about, and after we had our conversation, I was thinking about this some more because when when I talk to people and everyone's like talking about food pairings, and one of the things that they are everyone's always like, oh yeah, this red with this, this white with this. But like people I found often will overlook um food pairings with sparkling wine, you know. But you know, for yourself, what is a food pairing that you're like, all right, people overlook this, but it's like secretly elite, you know?

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Oh yes. Okay, so you're hitting the nail on the head here, and that's what we really like to do. Um, we have uh we have an estate chef at Gloria Ferrare as well, and he uh helps us just put together these meals where we're trying to change that perception that sparkling is not just a wine that you have, a glass to start the night. I hear it all the time, right? And I'm I'm a lover of sparkling both from making it and from drinking it. I drink, I mean, I drink so much sparkling, my blood is carbonated. So it it just it's just the something that always makes me happy. And my most overlooked, and people often look at me crazy when I say this, but my most overlooked pairing with sparkling wine is an aged Blanc de Blanc. And age for you can mean anything different. Maybe you like your wines a little fresher and it's only two years, or maybe it's 20 years in the case of like an extended Girage wine or something like that. Aged Blanc de Blanc and red meat. My favorite is ribeye steak. So, you know, aged Bonte Blanc and ribeye steak, and you say it, and it's two things that people would automatically go, absolutely not, right? It's a it's Chardonnay and red meat. And you hear people go like, no, no, no. But what happens is sparkling wine is a master of pairing across the board because we're working with acidity levels that are much more elevated, right? So when chefs are trying to pair, they're always looking for these complementary or um, you know, opposing factors, right? Salty and sweet, or you're trying to match the level of sweetness together with your dessert and make it work, right? So you can either come up to the level where it's at, or you can try and go the opposite way. And that's kind of the general basics of food pairings. But with this, what you have is this elevated acidity that cuts through all that fat. Whereas with red wines, right, you're using tannin, you're using the structure of the wine to make that pairing work. But here, we're using the acidity, and what it leaves you with is just the most clean feeling on your palate because you don't have any tannin that's that's sticking to different parts of your mouth like tannin does. What you have is this beautifully rich and uncuous kind of umami texture from the steak and the fat. And then that's paired with the sparkling that has the same level of uncuousness because of the age. And then you get this crisp acidity that leaves your palate clean, and then you keep coming back for it's actually a dangerous pairing because I find myself eating more and more and drinking more and more and more. Uh, but that's one of my favorite ones is AIDS, Age Guanta Blancan Red Meat. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

You know, it's like my daughter, uh, all of these paintings behind me are from my daughter. And since an early age, and I've got so many cool other ones, I got my whole room is wild. When I was uh a kid, my mom would would hang up stuff we did, and I was a children's teacher for a while, and I know the validation that can come from seeing what you've been creating. So I hang up all of her good paintings that she does with her teacher, and my wife's like, You think it's a bit excessive? And I'm like, No. And and so that's the one thing that she's like, Okay, whatever. But one of the things that when my daughter is studying painting is learning about how colors match and colors blend and colors pair, and yet um the teacher will teach her these work together, these don't. But then at the same time, my daughter's like, I'm gonna try these two together, and then something cool comes out of it, you know? And certainly you can get to the point where you have so many different things that it just gets overwhelming. But one of the things that since we're following the Tao of sparkling wine today, I'm gonna go back to uh, you know, Eastern philosophy reference and some martial arts. Um a lot of the things uh I studied Eastern philosophy in university, and one of the my favorite concepts is something called the beginner's mind. And the beginner's mind is when a master has trained for so long and they have so much experience that at some point in time they can let that all go and approach things with the mind of the beginner. And it's interesting that you know, I've met people like this is the way, this is the way you pair it, this is the way you do it. But like I've also sat there and met people that are like, and there's always new things I'm finding out. You know, the best thing to do is to say, hey, maybe I don't know, and let's try to figure out how to pair this with something, you know?

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Yeah. And I love the you you touched on so many things there because I the art thing is big for me, because we the only art that we have at our house um is things that our kids have created, right? And we frame them and we do these things, and um, you know, it it's so fun because they start as when they're young, and we started this when they were very, very young, and literally just scribbles on a page, right? And it's like, I want you. We took this, you know, 18 by 24 and said, Hey, just go crazy, go wild. But what you see is by giving them that confidence and the true reassurance that art the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? People come in and it's kind of like a X and Pollock and people are like, Wow, right. Well, my kids made it. So it's going on my wall, right? And in my office, I have all the things that they've created for me. So it's it's also what we as winemakers try and do because you know very early on in my career, um, I mentioned you're gaining all these levels of mastery and you're starting to open these doors that you just talked about. Um, and part of what I have always caught kind of called my ethos of winemaking is um, you know, people always say, What's the best wine you've you've ever made? And I said, Well, I haven't made it yet because I can always learn something from something new. And that's what I really love about the process of making wine. But um, early on in my winemaking career, when I was really excited to show myself and excited to kind of prove that I had this technical mastery, um, you know, it's helpful to have a mentor who sits there and, like you said, they can get back into the mind of the beginner. And it's what I've actively been trying to do with our team is sometimes you have to let people walk through the process and make that mistake, just like with art, right? Sometimes you need to put those two colors together that don't go, and then you figure out really quickly why they don't go together. So it goes with pairings with wine-making brown. Yeah, that's usually where it ends up with art, right? Um, and and sometimes you, you know, that that same um type of thing happens in winemaking, but I think a true mastery of making wine is not that you don't make any mistakes, um, because we're working with a substance that is chemically unstable. It's a living, breathing substance, right? This this wine has a soul, it has um a piece that wants to breathe, right? How many times have you heard people say, oh, well, give it five minutes to breathe. Decant that wine, give it some time to breathe. Well, that's because it's a living, breathing organism and it needs that time. Um, but what what you find is that you often have to have um the ability to fix the mistakes that happen, not to not make the mistakes. And that is where you gain the mastery from. But that's what I also try and do with our team is even though I I know decision they're making is going to lead down the road to X, whatever it is, sometimes you have to pose the question differently to get them to think that way, but still let them walk through it themselves. Because if we jump in as winemakers and we go to our lab and say, well, you can't do that because this, this, this, people kind of just shut down. But if you say, have you thought about what's if you make this decision, walk me through the this is my favorite, walk me through the thought process. Tell me more about where you want to go, right? Tell me more, is what's gonna happen in six months if you make this decision? And the first time you ask that question of your team, they sit down and they go, huh. And the first thing I tell my team is it's okay not to know what's gonna happen in six months. Don't don't come to me and try and tell me you know exactly what's gonna happen, because I don't know exactly what's gonna happen. I've just done this per six-month process enough that I can give you a pretty good idea, a pretty good guesstimate. But it's about teaching them how to walk through the process so that they can make that mistake and learn from themselves so that when they do make that mistake, they know how to fix it, right? And that's how we watch wines take steps up in quality is by having a team that comes together. And you could be the best winemaker in the world, but you can't do this by yourself. So, how do you get to make better wand? Well, you coach and you mentor your team and you bring your team up and say, Hey, and it's even as simple as going to the cellar, like, hey, tell me if I were to ask you to rack this tank, walk me through it. And and then if you see a mistake, say, Oh, why do we do that? And then let them come to the conclusion. And and what you'll find is just like you had said earlier, you often find new ways to do things by having that openness in your mind that I don't know everything because I don't, right? But it's just about being okay to have the right thought process. So it's exactly like I like what I said when um, you know, uh why I fell in love with history. History teaches you how to think, not what to think, right? Because the winners of the wars have written history, so there's always two sides, but it does teach you how to walk through the process of thinking, and that in and of itself creates lifelong learners, right? And that's what we're that's what I try and do with our team as well. Um, and our and kids, because that's what you want them to be naturally curious, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Yeah, I love that, you know, and it's one of the things too, like there is this this this process that you have to go through, but like the the end goal last night I had this awesome conversation on um uh on my growing money podcast with a really cool money coach. Uh and one of the things that we talked about were the three skills, three things that you need to kind of succeed. And the first was dreams. You have to have your dreams and your ambitions, you have to have your your values for money, like what's important to you, like where you always spend it. But the third thing was habits, and it's like I I you know what you're describing is like you people have this vision. I want to make, I want to make the greatest wine ever. Well, you you know, that becomes about with habits and little steps to get there, and uh it's beautiful like that that you can mentor that and inspire that. Because I mean, at the end of the day, we all would love to get to a place. I I I was talking to my financial advisor last night. And he's like, Sean, I don't know, you know, I've gotten you to the point, I'm working with you. He's like, I don't know if, you know, he was trying to say, like, he he wanted to make sure that the value he was providing me was what I, you know, thought was valuable. And I was like, dude, you're mentoring me. And he's like, he's like, I just want to make sure that you still think I'm providing value. And I was like, the idea of truly finding a great mentor is a hell of a thing, you know, and to have someone who can guide you through that process. But I want to spin in a tiny other direction, if you don't mind, and I'll let you respond to that, but I also want to dive into something else.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Yeah. I mean, the thing is, I think uh mentors come to your life right in all different ways. Um, and and it's not to say that there's just gonna only ever be one mentor. Um, but what I really think about that is you know, that the reason I fell in love with wine and winemaking is you know, we really have uh the winemaking community um is something unlike I've ever met.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Um, you know, that's exactly where I was gonna go, man.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

I wanted to talk to you about community. So that's perfect segue. You know, my my philosophy when I was coming up and and working through my career was I always took the job where I respected the winemaker. That I was working with. Um, because they end up imprinting a lot of things on you, whether you like it or not. Um, so that's the thing that I think, you know, I have these people that we now have a cohort, but the the the most um important thing for me is the winemaking community. And that is something that is so much bigger than any one winemaker or any one winery or any one wine region. Um and what I think that you find is a lot of a lot of winemakers, now not every, not a hundred percent, because nothing's ever a hundred percent, but a lot of winemakers get along so well because we're all pretty similar and we all have the same goals. Um, you know, and it's it's so fun because, you know, in my kids' school, um in and this is very Napa Valley, Greg, it's you know, you go to school and you're standing in line for drop off. Um, you know, my son's in first grade and they still line up on the dots, and we stand out there with them every day. But the reason I continue to do that and love it so much is um because it's showing my children that being part of the community means it's something bigger than you. And within that class, I mean, with between my daughter's class that she's in in preschool and my son who's in first grade, I think there's like 16 different winemakers at 16 different wineries. So when I go to my daughter's class for drop-off, it ends up becoming this networking event that takes you about 45 minutes to get out of, right? Because you ran into 15 of your friends. Um, but we're all very similar, and there's all it's always about something that's bigger than us, um, bigger than any one given person, um, because so much goes into making this. And it's it's really cool to see how community comes together, just especially within winemaking or in production, right? You have this vision, you have this thought, you have this dream, just like you were talking about with your financial goals. You have to have your dreams. You have this dream, and you realize that in your life, in your winemaking, in a team sport, in anything, you can have these dreams, but you can't do it alone, right? Very rarely do you say, and then in, and I will say one of the uh closest exception I could think of to doing it alone, right, is rock climbing. Right. That's that's the closest thing I could think of that you could do alone and and be successful at. But for the vast majority of everything else, it's about building a community around you that's all rallying for the same thing. Um, and that's what I fell in love with with the with the winemaking community, right? My first mentor, um, he he um he it's funny because he's actually a club member. He's still a club member. He was a club member when he when he hired me, but he's still a club member at Gloria Frere. So it's this very full circle thing. This is a guy who taught me how to make wine, and now I I I'm making wine for one of his favorite sparkling houses that he's been a member of for 25 years. Um but the thing that really hit me was when he sat me down, he said, So you want to learn how to make wine? I said, Yeah, you know, John, I really, really want to learn how to make wine. And he said, Well, I'm not gonna be able to teach you exactly how to do it or even say that it's the right way. And he pulls out this banker's box, huge banker's box, right? You know, one of the double deep ones. And it was just chocked full of about 150 notebooks. And he just gave it to me and said, This is everything that I've ever taken notes on. You can have it all. Like take whatever copies you want, whatever. And it was so different for me coming from this idea where, you know, in a lot of industries, your intellectual property is the way that you make your money. Um, and nobody wants to give that up. And here was a guy who'd been doing this for longer than I'd been alive at the time, and he just plopped everything he knew in front of me and said, take it all, right? Because he understood that you can give two winemakers the same grapes grown by the same grower from the same vineyard, two rows apart. They both take them back to their respective wineries and they make two completely different products. And that's what's so beautiful is working with other winemakers. We're always talking about the same things. Um, and it's it's really nice to have that community that when you run into an issue uh that you may not be able to solve by yourself, you got this little Rolodex that you can call. And that's the best part about this community is you know, people pick up the phone because you you you help them, they help you, we all help each other. And through that, we see globally the wine is getting better and better and better and better. But it's because of that community and that access to information and sharing with each other that wouldn't be possible if you tried to do this like tech or something like that. Think of if you're coming up a new product with tech. Um, you want to keep that a secret, and you have people sign NDAs and it's like top client classified all over the project project documents. It's not really like that in wine because it's uh it's so um different. Just, I mean, you can move um bottles one row over in our cellar and they age completely differently, which is just it's such a wild thing to me. But it's this kind of controlled chaos that we're working with, where you realize how out of control you actually are, and all you're really trying to do is get it to a point where people like to drink it and have something to do. But it it comes from having a strong sense of community, which is about being something bigger than you.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

That's awesome, man. Well, I want to ask you this. Who is someone in the world in the wine world you respect for how they show up for others and for what they do? And what do they do that that you think more people should copy?

SPEAKER_00 27:19

Oh man. Okay, so I've got I've got three people that are just at the top of my list. Um, and these three people are very, very close to me. Um, we work together all the time. Um, and we work together all at the same place for for quite quite some time. Um, and we've got our little kind of group that we have. Um, and and the first is um my my boss who was at the job where I previously was at, and her name's Anna Diogo Draper. Um, she is just an absolutely amazing winemaker and an amazing person. Um, and it was such a fun, you know, it was one of those times where um I was in the interview process and it we sat down and we were taking a walk. And by the end, I think it was like a 30-minute interview, and like two and a half hours later, we're just walking around the winery, and I just remember like, wow, this could I I would love to work with this person. And we worked together for five years. Um, and she shows up every day, all the time, for her team in the same way, right? She goes to bat, and we no longer work directly together, but we're we're still very close friends. Um, and she, you know, watched the birth of my children. She was actually the one who I'm such a workaholic and was such um driven that when I had my son, she was like, You are taking your paternity leave, you are leaving your computer here, you are not to answer any emails, you're not to talk to anybody from this establishment, you were taking all six weeks um because she'd been there, right? And it was her that sat me now said this is what, but it's she was also a person that pushed me into a creative zone that I never would have had um if I didn't work with her. And she's done it multiple times since with other winemakers, and and she's just she makes wine globally, she makes wine in Portugal, she makes wine here in the United States, and she just shows up for her for her people. Um, and she's incredibly active in the community. Um, and the the other people are uh were her bosses at um our testament when we worked together, and that's Harth3 O'Connor and Susan Suero. And she Susan Suero was a president who I respected just to no end. I mean, you want to talk about the definition of uh uh of a swan, right? Where the world could be and it was when she was actually president, it was during 2020, and the world was collapsing around us, literally, right? Nobody knew what was going on. And Susan has this calm demeanor that nothing is ever wrong. Now, underneath the surface, her feet may going, maybe going a million and a half miles an hour, but on the surface, she's poised and calm and collected. And that was when she it she really taught me just when you when you show up for your team, um, and she was a person that it took me so long to get to know her because she was always talking about you, because she cared about what was going on with you, right? And not in a way that, not in a deflective way, but in a way that drew you in and made you want to trust her. Um, you know, and and and her boss, Arthur O'Connor, was um kind of this this guy who kept us, yeah, he's like the synergist, he kept all of us together because he recognized these skills within all of us, and we all went to different places now, we all work at different places. But um, Arthur was the guy that was this he's this creative genius, right? And I still we we still have conversations to this day where every time I leave from from talking to him, I pick up something new. And it'd be just about anything, right? And it's not just about winemaking, but um, you know, he was the guy that really taught me um showing up for your team sometimes means making hard decisions and removing things that are tough to remove. Maybe you've got a bad player on your team, and um it's it's something that is really, really hindering the team. Um and even though you don't want to hurt a certain person's feelings or the way that something's handled, or maybe you have to do something for somebody else that you you just they have to be let go or anything like this, it's about making sure that you have the right players, and having the right players means that you defend them if something like that comes up. Um and these are three people that you know I would just have shaped not only my philosophy about winemaking, but my philosophy about the the industry as well. Um and the best part is they're just such positive, genuine human beings. Um, that we've all again, we've all gone our separate ways, but because of the things that we've put in place, um we always find each other back again. Usually it's quarterly for lunch, but um, you know, at least quarterly. Um but these are three people that showed up for their teams and and and showed up for the surrounding community in a way that I had never ever seen before. That's awesome, man.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

Well, and it it pairs in like the community and the tradition in in in sparking is so like established that it leads me to ask one question. Um, you know, uh as sorry, I don't know why that worker's calling me. Right. As the there is like this evolution and this growth, you know, and like people are evolving. So there's tons of room to experiment as well. Like when you have this tradition and and this room to grow, where do you personally draw the line between respecting the craft and then pushing it forward?

SPEAKER_00 32:37

That's a really, really good question, Sean, because um it's it's tough, especially with sparkling wine, where um, you know, the the the way that a lot of winemakers are taught is how style reigns supreme, right? That means the style of whatever house you're at is not to be changed. It's not to be because there's a specific expectation, especially when you come to things like champagne, right? Where there's an expected quality level, people just know that that is going to be there. Um and I think that is done through constant refinement. Um you're always learning from history, um, but it you're always trying to drive something forward. And what I mean by that is a small collection of changes makes makes a makes a minor impact. Now, small changes over a long period of time make a huge impact, right? It's it's kind of like when you're doing anything in life. You know, if you wanted to get in shape, let's say you wanted to um, you know, lift weights, lift heavier weights, would you go straight to lifting maybe 130 pounds more? No, you would do it two and a half, three and a half, five and a half pounds at a time, right? But by the time you got to the end of that journey and hit that goal that you wanted, you've realized that over this six month, eight month, twelve month period, you've made a big change. Now with sparkling wine, it's it's very different because our feedback loop is so slow, right? I mean, our products, for instance, at Gloria Ferrera, they sit anywhere from 18 to 18 months to upwards of 20 years in the ex in the case of our extended Tirage wines. So, what I think is important there is to always know where you're wanting to go before you actually take that first step. Because you have to understand the history that you have and you have to understand how you're gonna still incorporate that and be respectful to it while still constantly striving to make something better. And I think that is a thing that I love about sparkling wine is even though it's tied so much in history, it's not stuck. It's not stuck in time, right? Sparkling wine has evolved over and over and over. Just that process is very slow and these changes are very small and minute. Um, so I think it's really about understanding where you want to go before you take that first step.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

Coming back to martial arts, because I feel like there's still this circle of having like I I love that this because what you're talking about, as I've seen martial arts evolve, uh one of the things is the techniques are still the same, but they're not. You know, it's interesting as as people are, you know, like the world of MMA caused all these people to ask this question of like, how does this actually apply in this situation or that situation? And like, and yet you see now these guys who are like it was interesting because in MMA, I'm gonna divert a little bit. The uh MMA, you know, started out and it was just wild. Early MMA was wild. It was like a dude with one boxing glove and like a bare hand, and he was just hitting people with the boxing glove, and then there were other people that were purists of one sport, you know, there was like, but you know, it was the the Mui Thai fighters and the uh jujitsu people that started to kind of emerge, and the wrestlers, and like suddenly you had these three styles that were seen as very strong. But what happened was like as people all became more proficient in these core disciplines, there began this uh uh uh expansion out. And now like the jujitsu community is sitting there going, Wow, judo's pretty rad. Like, we need to learn how to do these judo throws, you know. And so it's like there is this change, but it's also an end to adaptation and uh yet preserving of tradition at the same time. And it's this balance because you know, you don't want to abandon everything, but is there, I mean, like the one basic thing is like you know, no gio jujitsu, like people don't wear heavy lapels, so there's not that thing to grab onto. So you have to learn how to adapt things, but yet is the art still essentially the same for sure, you know? And and like if the if you could get someone, if you could, and this is the thing I try to remind people if you could get a winemaker from 300 years ago and bring them forward to now and go, hey, this is the these are the tools we have now, they're gonna be like, dude, this is amazing. That problem that I always had, you guys learned how to fix it, you know?

SPEAKER_00 36:58

Yeah, it's it's really you hit the nail on the head because it it it it depends on what time period you're looking at, right? If you look at winemaking, and this is why I think um, you know, it's it's very interesting when you talk to winemakers from other countries. Um, and there's a perfect example. Um, this year in or 2025 in in California, pretty mild vintage, uh cooler than average, I would say. We even have rain during harvest, which we normally don't get. Um, so everybody here was just at their wit's end and and kind of at a loss. Um, and I'm fortunate enough that I kind of have a a group because we I've been part of these global groups that I've got these winemakers that I interact with that are international. And um conversely, from what we were dealing with in uh California, in Europe, it was ungodly hot, right? So I'm over here talking to people and freaking out about an eighth of an inch of rain, a quarter of an inch of rain, right? What do I do? What's going on? Oh my gosh, and you have these people that you can ping. Um, and they're like, an eighth inch of rain. What are you talking about? That that happens to us six times a year, right? Like you're gonna be fine. Just don't worry. What do I do? What do I do? And I'm like, 40 C that's like a hundred degrees. We deal with that all the time. Just let it go, but turn the irrigation on, don't pick when it's hot, you're gonna be fine, right? But the fact that there's this global community, and where I'm going with this, is they have in in Europe, they have thousands and thousands and thousands of years of history, right? Whereas here in in California, our history is so much shorter. So if you took it, I think you know what you were just saying, if you took a winemaker from 300 years ago, one, they wouldn't even know that you were making wine in California, right? If you were to talk about this, right? And there would be nobody here that we would be talking to um on any sort of scale. Now was there home winemaking and and wild winemaking and stuff like this. Yeah, but as an industry, it wasn't wasn't widely available. But if you then take someone from, let's say, 1500 years ago back in France and show them what's going on now, I mean, again, you're you're talking about that. So I think that change depends on how long that your time period is, right? And that's where I always look at how long that time period is gonna be. For instance, a sparkling line, how long is it gonna age? Because if I make a change today, let's say to a product that is gonna age five years, um, what's the market gonna want in five years? And is that decision that I'm making today the right change for five years from now? Um, and that's where I think the the span or the period that you're looking at really matters when you're making these changes and trying to identify these things that you that that are going to happen, right?

SPEAKER_01 39:42

I I I love that, man. But I want to come back to the the the people that are just diving into sparkling wine. You know, if you were building a sparkling wine starter kit for someone who only drinks still wine, what three things do they really need to think about when they that they gotta start doing to really convert them to sparklings, the magic of sparkling?

SPEAKER_00 40:04

I think the biggest thing, if you if you were gonna build that kit that you're talking about, Sean, I would look for um first, I would look for three different production styles so that you can start to identify because there's a number of ways that you can make sparkling wine, right? Um method traditional is the most probably regarded as the highest quality. That means that that's method champagnoise or method traditionale means that that wine is fermented for the second time in the bottle that it is going to be sold in. Um and that means the CO2 comes in naturally from the yeast actually eating the sugar. Um, and then there is another method called Charmot, where that same process happens and it's a cellular fermentation, but happens in a tank and then it's bottled under pressure. Um, and then there's forced carbonation, just like with Coca-Cola, right? And I would say that if you're gonna build that starter kit for somebody who just has, let's say your mind is, you know, MIB comes in, men in black come in, and they flash that little thing in your face, and right, and your memory is gone. Um, and and and where I would like, if that happened to me, where I would need to start to get back to understanding um sparkling wine and and figuring out what I like, is I would find wines that are produced in those three styles so that you can see what the differences are and why those styles are necessary, right? Some of it's a cost implication, some of it's a stylistic implication. Um, but I would pick wines that are traditional method, Charmot, and forced carbonation, um, and try them all in either. I I would do it side by side because that's the easiest way. Because what you find is that they are three very different wines. Um, and from there, it's about picking regions after that, right? So, hey, you really like this type of fruit, let's go to Champagne. Do you really like a lot of sunshine and big fruit wines? Let's go to California. Um, if you know, things like that. But I would start with those three production styles so that you understand the sparkling wine is a wide array across the globe and across production styles and hone it in from there. Because the the thing with sparkling wine is once you go down that rabbit hole, you can go very deep very, very quickly. Right.

SPEAKER_01 42:01

And I I think that the there's this idea of with reds and whites, people know there's different types and this different ways of doing things. But I think that with sparkling, people just go, a lot of people just go, oh, it's it's sparkling, it's one thing, and they don't realize there's this level of diversity in sparkling that's so powerful, you know. So it's beautiful stuff, man. Um last question for you today. Um, when someone opens a bottle or visits a winery, what do you wish people would like experience when they pop open that bottle? Are you talking about at home or when they're at the at the tasting room?

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Um let's say at home, joy. Just I want people to be happy, right? Um, I want people to, I want something that um wines that we make to to tingle, tickle a lot of different senses for you and just bring back good memories. Um, but most importantly, I think it's really important that a wine should one bring joy and make you happy, but it shouldn't overshadow what's going on at the time that you open it. And what I mean by that is um it shouldn't be a showstopper, right? It shouldn't stop the conversation, it should add to it, right? It shouldn't be a wine that makes you stop and pause and hold hold on, hold on. I I know I hear what you're saying, but I'm really focused on this right now. Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad. Maybe it's so good that they're like, whoa, maybe it's so bad that they're oh God. But it's neither one of those should happen because if you think about wine as a as a as a beverage, right? It's it's a wine that is about community, it's about um a sense of coming together, right? Oftentimes it's served around a family style table or at a restaurant when you go out and you have other people there with you. Um and it's about bringing people together. And if you do something that stops the conversation, That immediately starts to push people apart, right? But so I think it should wine should give you a sense of pleasure, they should bring joy, they shouldn't stop the conversation, and they should be memorable, right? They should, and that can even be evoking a memory that you had such a great experience at the tasting room or the place that you bought this bottle, and you want to have that same feeling when you come home. Um or it could be maybe it was just your wedding and it was a wine that you served at your wedding, and you want to remember those happy, happy times, or maybe it was a favorite bottle that you shared with a grand grandpa, grandma, dad, or mom or something, right? And it's bringing back those happy memories, but it should be memorable. So it should it should make you happy, it shouldn't overshadow anything, and it should just be memorable. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 44:44

And you know, the idea of being memorable is I think a great thing. And I think that at the end of the day, um, that's something that all of us should wish for, that the things that we create are memorable and that they are. I I just recently made a video for my wife that um just went viral. And we've been I shoot a lot of videos for her, but this one was memorable and it it connected and on a deeper level. And we had all of these people messaging us and just engaging with the post. I think it had like 1.8 million views now for this one video. And not that that's a a metric of whether it was great or not, but the fact that people remembered it was what was really like I don't care about the numbers, but the fact that people were like engaging, going, this was powerful, this isn't this inspired me, this was something. And A, it showed a level of craft, B, it showed a level of storytelling, and C, it showed that we have that that component that people are just looking for. Whether that be that, you know, that second take when someone drinks that wine, whether it be something that, you know, you're sitting there. I remember, I don't, I wish I could tell you what it what vintage it was, what wine it was, but I remember when I was in Vegas recently with my wife uh for a show that she was singing and I I had this glass of Pinot. And I do not know what it was. It was just I had it there and we were at the casino and I had this glass, and I just was like, I can still remember it. I it still sticks with me. And I've had many glasses of wine that don't do that. So I wish I was like, I wish I knew what that was because it was memorable. And then I had another glass recently with some from some fancy producer that you know, and not hating on them, but it wasn't memorable. Like I I drank it, it was okay, but it didn't stick with me, you know?

SPEAKER_00 46:33

Yeah, and that's I think that's just such a really important point as well, is not every single wine is going to do that for every single person. And right, right, and because some sometimes the the memory that you just had at the casino, sometimes so memorable. Yeah, right. But but the fact that you you didn't need to know because maybe what would have happened if it was served to you and um you know it was a producer that notorious you you notoriously just have said, I you know what, I don't really like their wines, I never have, right? And but not knowing it and going into it blind, it creates this moment, this moment of beauty, right? And that's why I always tell people that if you really are so sure that you have a cult favorite that you love and you'll say, I could pick that out of the lineup with my eyes closed, I always say, do it, put it blind, right? Because and that's what I'll do as a winemaker is whenever I get to an impasse, if I'm sitting here and I'm trying to overanalyze a decision, I'll just remove all the bias and I'll I'll ask our lab, put I'm gonna leave the room, put it in two separate glasses, right? What it is on the bottom so I can't see, and mix them up, turn it around, backwards, forwards, forwards. Only you're gonna know this. And then I don't want you to be here while I'm tasting, so I can't look for cues on you. But that just taste it blind. So essentially what you did was taste it blind and found that that moment of beauty, right?

SPEAKER_01 47:52

I I that's where that's where I'm at for this point in my wine tasting journey. Like, I I try not to pick myself. If I go somewhere, I'll just be like, hey, what are what are people drinking right now? What are people liking? And I try it because I find that I get into like bias all the time. I'll sit there and go, well, this one was good last time. And it doesn't mean it's gonna be great, you know, it doesn't mean it's gonna be this or that. Like, and I think that one of the things that's so important is to be to experience the beauty of all of the flavors out there, you know, uh of all of the diversity out there, whether that be food or this or that. And yeah, I I think that it's always good to dive in and let the uh the process, let the magic of that glass speak to us.

SPEAKER_00 48:36

Yeah, and that's that's just it. I I I love that you said that. It's like the knot picking thing. That's my favorite thing to do when we go out to dinner. And my wife and I like to say, when we go out to dinner, we like to sit at the if there's a kitchen bar, we love to sit at the kitchen bar. Um otherwise, we like to sit at the at at the bar because I love watching what the bartenders are doing. Um right? And you know, once you find a bartender who you know is really good and you you watch him, and I'll always I'll always kind of watch before I I figure out because um, you know, they'll say, What can I get you a drink? I'm like, surprise me. Make me something that you're passionate about making. Um, you know, I'll give you the fact I I like whiskey as a base, I also like tequila as a base. There's kind of a jumping off point, but just make me something that you're passionate about and you're excited about, right? And you go into it with no expectations. And most of the times I'm blown away because I was like, I would have never thought to do that. Um, and then you ask him, and then but it's that also that natural conversation piece too, where you know, they they're so you could see they're so passionate about uh you know doing this. And I wouldn't do this in like a dive bar, right? But you know, it's yeah, you go to the restaurants that we go to, you have these fancy bars and things like that. Um, and you know, and but there's it starts a conversation. Tell me about why you why you decided to go this way. Well, what what did I say that made you kind of put these things together? And then that is also really helpful for me as a winemaker because it's I always watch how chefs and bartenders put flavors together, right? Right, because like here's a perfect example. Um, Long Island iced tea on paper, that just should be horror, that should be the color brown, like we were talking about earlier with when you're mixing colors, right? But yet it's one of the most popular drinks across bars in America. And it on paper, it shouldn't work, right? So it's I always love to ask chefs and and bartenders how they go about putting flavor together because that always helps me kind of drive my winemaking as well. When you start, it's just like you said earlier, it's that mastery of understanding that you don't know everything. And maybe there's a different way to look at this. I love that, man. Well, where can people find out more about you and the wines that you make? Yeah, you can find us on uh online at gloriafrare.com. Um, and then you can also check out our YouTube channel. Um, we have a seven-hour masterclass up there. So if you really want to dive into sparkling, um, there's seven hours of talking about everything, and we start very, very basic on go as deep as you want to go. So those are two great things um to look at and find out more about sparkling wine.