Sparkling Wine and Modern Consumers - Kyle Altomare, Gloria Ferrer

Gloria Ferrer winemaker Kyle Altomare joins Wine Country Business to discuss why sparkling wine is resonating with a new generation of consumers. As younger drinkers look for more personal and experience-driven connections with brands, wineries are being forced to rethink hospitality, storytelling, and loyalty.

Kyle also shares candid insights on blending sessions that turn guests into lifelong ambassadors, the dangers of “forced authenticity,” and what many wine brands still misunderstand about community and consumer connection.

Transcript

Andrew Allison 0:04

Welcome to Wine Country Business, the podcast exploring the strategy and trends shaping the global world of wine spirits and luxury hospitality. I'm your host, Andrew Allison, a third generation Napa Valley native and exited startup founder. I'm bringing you inside candid conversations with the business leaders defining our industry today. This show is brought to you by Top Shelf Ventures. Top Shelf finds, funds, and accelerates the premiere opportunities in the global alcohol and vice categories, led by industry experts with a track record of major acquisitions. Their team acts as the catalyst for disruptive startups reaching for global scale. They don't just invest, they bring operational horsepower, a huge network, to you, the entrepreneur, to help you dominate your market. That's TopShelfVentures.com, accelerating the world's most innovative brands. Let's dive in. Welcome back to another episode of Wine Country Business. Who are you and what do you do?

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 1:08

Thanks for having me, Andrew. My name's Kyle Altomare. I'm the winemaker at Gloria Ferrer. And how long have you been making wine for? I've been making wine for 14 years now. And if you asked me 14 years ago if I'd be making wine, I'd say, absolutely not. You're crazy. This is not something I'd ever do. And, you know, got bit by the bug.

Andrew Allison 1:22

So let's rewind the clocks. How did you end up on your origin story ending up in being a winemaker for a major winery?

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 1:31

That's a fun one. I actually kind of backed my way into it. You know, I had a plan since I was five years old. I mean, I was gonna play baseball until I was 40, I was gonna teach until I was 50. I was gonna have a pension. I was gonna ride off into the sunset, no cares, no worries, and uh, you know, stopped playing baseball at about 21, stopped teaching at 23, and was kind of looking around and going, man, what do I want to do? So it's a second career for me. And, you know, I'd never heard when I was looking around for what I want to do with my second career, I never heard somebody say, I used to be a winemaker. You heard a lot of lawyers as you talk to. I used to be a lawyer, now I own a vineyard. I used to be a doctor, now I make wine. I used to be in tech, now I own a winery. I'd never heard someone say, I used to be a winemaker and now I'm a doctor, right? So I figured, you know, I'll skip that in-between and I'll go right to where they're going. And I just fell in love with it. I'm obsessed with flavor. That's really what drew me to it.

Andrew Allison 2:16

Well, were some of the first places you worked at that helped you edge your way into becoming the winemaker you have become?

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 2:22

Yeah, the first place I ever worked was actually at Gary Farrell out in Healdsburg. Um, you know, I was just got done with college, done with teaching, was looking for, you know, what I want to do. And I took a job in system administration, IT, wine club, tasting room, kind of just doing a little bit of everything, helping the brand out. And then I got a chance to help during harvest and I was hooked. I was done. That was it. But the real formative one for me was a winery called Westwood Winery out in Sonoma. It was just me and a man named John Kelly. And I had actually stumbled upon this place, beautiful little tasting room on the downtown Sonoma Square. You wouldn't see it if you're walking down the sidewalk. All that it was was this little hallway. And at the end of the hallway is a candle, and I kind of poked my head in, no signs, nothing. What's down this hallway? Opens up to this beautiful Tuscan courtyard, and I go in, it's just John sitting there reading a book, and I tasted his wine. So I was trying to taste around. I was at this point, I thought I wanted to be a psalm and go into the service side. So I'm just trying to taste as every place I can. John sits down, we have this kind of talk about nothing, and I just remember drinking these wines and going, wow, these are some of the best wines I've ever tasted in my life. Keep in mind, I'm very young. What I had as a reference point at that point was kind of some major wineries and barefoot Merlot, right? So, and I'm going, Oh, this was kind of this transformational experience. And I, you know, I said, John, these wines are amazing. If you ever want help, you know, I'll work on weekends, I'll work nights, I'll come over after hours, do whatever. I just want to learn. And it took him about a year, right? I bent back a couple times to join the wine club. And I went back about a year later and he said, Hey, you still want that job? And I said, Absolutely. He said, Okay, meet me at this vineyard Monday morning. Took the day off from work, met him at the vineyard Monday morning. And we're just walking through, talking about, again, nothing. And we stop at this little, you know, two-acre block of Cabernet, and he sits me down and he says, You know, if you come work for me, you're gonna manage this this year. Keep in mind, I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm still wet behind the ears. I have no idea what's going on, right? And he took me under his wings. So he was the guy that really kind of formed all my thoughts about winemaking. It was always about innovation, it was about pushing boundaries. It was about doing things that just gave a sense of place and gave a sense of belonging to the wines. And when you put them on the center of the table, not only the labeled the whole package, but the wines just kind of integrated into whatever space you were in. And that was the guy that really kind of taught me how to come at wine at a human approach rather than a scientific approach. And from there, I just started working my way up. After John sold the company, I ended up leaving and working at a couple of places in Napa Valley. I worked at Clope Goss in the cellar and running bottling lines. Then I went over to Charles Krug and ran the lab for them. And then I got to work with Anna Diogo at Artessa, and that was where we really just sunk in and we worked so well together. And that's where I got to cut my teeth in sparkling. And that's where I fell in love with it is making sparkling wine. It's something special.

Andrew Allison 4:46

We'll get to sparkling in just a second. But what was your first running a lab?

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 4:51

I really messed up moment. Every year when harvest starts, I start getting harvest nightmares, right? And it's something where you never know it could be anything. It's just work kind of follows you home. You're working 15, 16 hours a day. And my first big uh oh, I messed something up was I forgot to calibrate. We were doing some cold stability, and it was for a bottling run that was like next week, right? And I had forgot to calibrate the machine. And this was like, I'm talking, we were bottling, I think, 150, 160,000 gallons of Pinot Grigio the next week. So I'm going, cool. Turn the numbers in, everything looks perfect. Wake up in the middle of the night, and I'm like, uh oh. Did I calibrate this machine? I calibrated the machine. Did I not calibrate the machine? I had to have calibrated the machine, right? And it's one of those ones where luckily I got away with it. It actually was stable. The calibration wasn't as far off as I thought it was. It was just that kind of deer in the headlights moment where you realize that the lab is kind of the final safeguard. And that's what really helped me form my thoughts as a winemaker was you have to rely on your team. You can't do this alone. I learned all the way up, you know, burning the cellar, cleaning hoses, hauling hoses, putting them away, cleaning tanks, washing them, getting inside tanks and scrubbing them clean. That's where I started. Work my way all the way up. But even if you know how to do everything in the winery, you can't do it by yourself. And you really have to rely on your team. And that was really my first moment that I realized the lab is the last line of defense, as is the cellar. When you're writing these work orders, when you're doing these things, it's just you have to rely on training people the right way and getting them to buy in as much as you're bought in. That's how you really make quality wine.

Andrew Allison 6:18

When did you realize that the transition from still to sparkling wine? So my understanding is you you make both, but obviously you work at a huge sparkling house. How was that transition and what are the major differences?

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 6:31

Yeah, sparkling and still wine is a very, very different game. And it's very rare that you find a winemaker that has expertise in both because it takes so long to master your craft. And I was very fortunate that at Artessa, we did so much of both. I kind of got this trial by fire. And the difference between still and sparkling wine is you kind of have to turn your brain upside down. The things that you're worried about in still wine, they don't apply as much to sparkling wine. The things that you're worried about in sparkling wine, they don't apply as much to still wine. So you have to think about these things in a different way. And I always say that making sparkling wine is really about listening and about listening to where the wine wants to go. You have to have an idea of the kind of wine you want to make because you have to start at the end and work backwards. Whereas with still wine, you start at the beginning and you kind of feel your way through it. But if you don't have an idea in mind of where you want this wine to go with sparkling, it becomes very, very hard because it's a very technical style of winemaking. So you kind of have to anticipate what could possibly go wrong or where you want to go so that you know how to get there, right? It's kind of like set your course and then map it out after.

Andrew Allison 7:33

When were you given the keys to become the official winemaker of Gloria Ferrer? What was the tipping point?

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 7:39

The tipping point was uh I think it was March of 2023. And I was very fortunate to work under a gentleman named Harry Hanson. He'd worked uh at Gloria Ferrer in the 1980s, actually 86. So right after the winery opened its doors, all the way to 2001. And um, he came back in 2021. And when I had started, I was the associate winemaker at Gloria Ferrer. And I got to work under Harry for a year before taking the reins. And it was really, really helpful to have somebody there who understood the business, somebody who understood the house style. House style is a very, very big thing when you're talking about sparkling. I mean, our average time to release is, you know, anywhere from 18 to 36 months on average. So that's a very slow feedback loop, right? So if you want to make changes and things like our Tete Cuvée, they sit for nine years in Tirage before we get to release them. That's a very, very slow feedback loop. Think about making a decision today, and you're saying, okay, what does the next generation consumers want right now? I don't know, right? It's hard to say that today. What are they gonna want in nine years? That's almost impossible to answer. So understanding the house style and understanding that the changes that you want to make have to be very small, very methodical. Um, and it's the slow evolution over time that create a very large change, but it feels very seamless as you're doing it. So that transition point happened for me in March of 2024.

Andrew Allison 8:53

What are the things that you're working on right now for this upcoming season?

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 8:58

Yeah, so innovation is very, very big at Gloria Ferrer. Innovation is something that we look at. It's in our DNA. You know, when the Ferris purchased the property, it was 1982. Picture this, Carneros, 1982. The only thing that's around as far as the eye could see, maybe one vineyard down the street with uh the San Giacomo family. On the knapped side, you have Larry Hyde, you have Louis Martini. Just purchased land, don't have any, you know, vines in the ground yet. The Ferrare family came out and found this piece of property that we have that's our home ranch and our winery now. And everybody told them if you're gonna purchase this property, you should really farm cattle. And the Ferr family who own freshnette in Spain, they said, no, we're gonna grow grapes here. Oh, you can't grow grapes here. It's too cold. The soils aren't right. It's you're never gonna get things right. Oh, I I think we can. And, you know, so they were at the cutting edge. They had purchased property in Carneros and put vines in the ground before Carneros was even an American viticultural area. So innovation has always been something that's in the lifeblood of what we do. And I'm always looking for ways to kind of push the boundary in a very thoughtful manner. You know, if we're working on a sparkling Chen and Blanc, which, you know, I've made Shenon Blanc with still wine, and I'll put bubbles in anything. So I love it. So, but I have no real roadmap on what Chen and Blanc sparkling should be. I mean, you can go to Loire, you can go some places in France, and you can go to Vivray and get all of these things, but it doesn't really mean that it's gonna translate back to California winemaking. So it's always that's what's really fun is kind of looking at things through a different lens. And what I try and do with these innovation wines is just make wines that people are gonna identify with. And all I want is just someone to take a sip and you just see their face light up. You see them smile, right? You see their facial expression change, their shoulders relax. And that's what I really want to convey with these wines is just a way to follow a single thread and make someone happy.

Andrew Allison 10:32

With innovation being a focus of the brand, how are you thinking about reaching consumers in the next year with either the products that you're making or thinking about making?

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 10:42

Yeah, I think it you really have to kind of approach this in a social manner. You know, winemaking is is what it is, and you can do a number of different things, but it's really about the story that you tell. And can you create an immersive experience with your wine? When you come to Gloria Forever and you go to any winery, you likely have a very, very good experience, right? That's what we're we're famous for here is hospitality. And the big thing, I think, is how do you create wines that take that home? But also how do you create experiences that you could take home with you? So that's kind of something that we're thinking about is how do you have these experiences where opening a bottle of Gloria Forever at home feels exactly the same as sitting on our terrace looking over our 230-acre vineyard and the cool Carnero's breeze is blowing and you can see the lavender, smell the lavender that we have planted, you're eating great food, you're drinking great wine. How do you convey that to someone who goes back to their home and you know wants to still have that feeling? Because that feeling is what people latch on to. That's what creates, you know, lifelong customers. That's what creates lifelong ambassadors of your brand.

Andrew Allison 11:41

What are some of the typical challenges that a brand runs into when trying to storytell? Or what are some of the common pitfalls that you see other brands or maybe you've even fallen into with storytelling? Absolutely.

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 11:55

It's forced authenticity, is what I call it. We can all tell you this wine is special because of our single vineyard. That's what makes it special. Well, if you have 500 other wineries that all have a very special piece of land to them, and the wine is very special from that place, it's not a very authentic story, right? So it's not unique. And it's about how to tell things that are going to resonate across multiple generations. And that's really tough because multiple generations want very, very different things. You know, think about just across age demographics, how different buying patterns are or how different their interests are. So it's really just about creating a story that you're not telling a story, you're living the story. And if you live that story, then it tells itself. And people see that. I think I truly think that consumers really understand when somebody's walking the walk rather than talking the talk. And that is something that I think is a challenge every single day, right? Because you have all these outside factors. We have all these things going on with the market, all these things going on with imports and tariffs and all these things that we're talking about. But if you continue to march to the same ethos that you have and you constantly back up what you're saying with what you're doing, then people really resonate with that.

Andrew Allison 13:00

How do you think about the industry at large when you hear that there's massive supply in the market or there's doomsday scenario, Gen Zers not falling in love with wine the way that the boomers had? What do you say to those folks? Or how do you think about those new cohorts that are entering the market? Yeah, take a breath. Right?

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 13:20

We told the same story about millennials, and I just wrote an article on Friday that millennials are now the biggest wine buying uh generation that we have right now. The pitfall of the wine industry right now is that we fall into patterns and we fall into what's safe and we fall into what we know. And what worked for one generation doesn't necessarily work for the rest.

Andrew Allison 13:37

So the patterns changing, but the consumption's edging up every year.

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 13:41

Yeah, I think that, you know, a lot of the doom and gloom is kind of clickbait. If it bleeds, it leads, right? That kind of thing. Where if somebody kind of jumps on that bandwagon. So what we're trying to do is just tell a very positive story. Hey, we've been here for 40 years and we're gonna be here for another 40. We're happy to see you. We love that you're here, but I do think that we need to start talking about consumers in a different way. Historically, what was the point of a website? It was to drive traffic to get tasting reservations, to drive people to your winery or to capture a sale, right? And now we need to start thinking about things. We are such an inherently online community worldwide that you need to start thinking about things in a different manner. And if you think about only traffic is people that walk through the door of your winery, you're missing a very big portion of the consumers.

Andrew Allison 14:23

So that there's a community building element. And I think the Discord servers that I've had over the years, I've seen you active in those and engaging with not only consumers but other industry leaders. But I think you're so right. The need to community build online is what's a big part of this next generation. It's not just Instagram posts of, you know, the nice sundress and you know, floral basket and running to the vineyard. And, you know, it really is the engaging with people that want to see you day in, day out be the same person. How do you think about engaging with consumers when they get on site as a winemaker? What are some things that a winemaker unique to yourself or unique to your role can do that no other role on the property can do?

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 15:03

I don't think it's unique, but I think there's a different interaction. There are other people that can do it, but the uniqueness comes from the way that you do it. Or the stature of the role. Correct. And there's a different tone, obviously, when a winemaker says something than when somebody in the tasting room says something or when anybody else is looking at things in a different way. I think first and foremost, you have to uh come at this from an educational perspective. People really love to learn, they really love to learn about things, but the big thing that I think needs to happen is winemakers, we often fall into this trap that we're so passionate about things that we often talk at this level where it's almost unattainable. Inside baseball. Exactly. And you know, you have to break it down to ways that people can identify with and understand. And I always say if you can explain it to a kindergartner, then people will relate. And you don't talk to them like they're a kindergartner, but if you can explain it in a way that a kindergartner will understand, then you have a true mastery of the subject.

Andrew Allison 15:55

From um some of the experiences that you've actually hosted, what are some of the highest revenue generating opportunities that a winemaker can provide besides making the best wine?

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 16:05

You know, we have a club that is the Heritage Society. It's a very special club, and basically we walk you through how to make your own wine. And at the end, you go home with six bottles of your own wine. We blend the wine to your specifications. I walk you through a blending seminar. We take you through a tirage experience where we taste the wine in tirage, which not many people get to do. They're used to tasting finished sparkling wine. Not a lot of people get to taste the base wines before they're blended. We taste the base wines, we blend them together, we bring it back halfway through the process. We taste the wine when it's actually done fermenting the second time of the bottle, but nothing else there. And then we do a dosage seminar. But along the way, we're teaching and kind of talking about wine in a different way. And the way that we approach this is really to open people's minds to thinking like a winemaker because that has a different appreciation for how much it actually takes to make a single bottle of wine and how many hands have to touch it for it to get to its end consumer.

Andrew Allison 17:00

A little bit more appreciation for the work that you do. Exactly. And so, did I understand that right? You bring that same consumer back on site three times, once in the beginning, once in the middle, and once at the end. Four times. Wow. And so you're getting revenue opportunities at every one of those because they might stay for a meal. If you have a culinary program, they might actually buy some bottles or do a tasting that day beyond the experience. So you've got four bites of the apple, even if they're all smaller average order values, but they're coming to re-engage with you and engage with the brand.

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 17:30

That's exactly it. And I think the big revenue opportunity comes from the fact that you get a lifelong ambassador and a lifelong memory. Wow. Yeah, that's cool. This is something that people go home and they tell their friends about. And we have people flying in from all over the United States. We do have a large local population that is in this type of club, but we have people that are coming from Texas and Florida and you know, Idaho, and actually planning their vacations around coming out to do this experience. And when they go home, they rave about it, right? And they take it back. So it's a really good way to have people that have a true, authentic, and unique experience go back and deliver the message in a way that it's natural and it's synthesized already, right? So it's their true experience of what happened.

Andrew Allison 18:12

And it's that FOMO of, oh, I want that. That's really interesting. I would love to try that one as a consumer, but two, I think my observations of the self-blending experiences where you go to a winery that has a bunch of barrels of finished wine and it's still and you're mixing it together and you're putting your own cork in it and you're writing your own label, that's fun. But the shelf life is very negligible of that wine. And let's be honest, I'm not going to blend wine better than somebody who does it day in, day out, and I'm not making great wine, even though the great product, like the ingredients that went in were fantastic, but I didn't put it together on a great percentage basis.

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 18:47

And I think that's where this experience is different because we walk you through, and our cohort of classes actually make that decision, right? They have me as the guardrails and they have me there to kind of, hey, have you thought about this? Hey, what if we looked at things this way? Do we like more Pinot Noir? Do we like more Chardonnay? And these are things that we walk through. But then what we do is we take it and go back and do it to a commercially acceptable long shelf life. These are wines that we actually make that are true to only that customer base and only that class. And the cool thing now is that we've been doing this for four years now. And now that we have four classes, we have enough of a library of these wines that only they can buy, but we can have tasting experiences where we bring all the classes back together and everybody can taste everybody's blend side by side. And it's really fun because what you see is a group of 25 strangers that started not knowing anybody. Everybody's a little apprehensive, everybody's a little tense. By the end of the first session, you know, people are going to get dinner together. They're going on trips together and bringing those cohorts back together. There's also a little bit of competition, which is very, very fun to see. You know, everybody's got such a great sense of pride in their wine. It's like my wine was way better than the 2024 class. I don't know what they were doing. But it also creates different talking points for them, which is really fun to see.

Andrew Allison 19:58

When you are thinking of 2026, what are you most excited about in the industry right now that is something that feels fresh?

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 20:06

I think the thing I'm most excited about is the next generation is looking at things in a different way. Consumers or winemakers? Both. We're at this kind of tipping point where we're not satisfied with the status quo. I don't know about you when you drink wine at home, but it's very rare that I'm drinking the same wine twice in a month. Same. And for me, that's part of the journey and that's part of the experience. Um, and I think that the next generation of consumers, the next generation of winemakers, they're looking for things like alternative vessels to use that, you know, maybe it's a little historic that we've fallen out of love with like amphoras and clay and things like that. Maybe it's something new like sandstone. Maybe it's a new varietal that's not unique or not, you know, native to that area and there's a small block. You know, I've really been on this quest to just find some varietals that we can make sparkling out of that are not traditional. And is that why that Shenon Blanc? Yeah, that's kind of where the Shenon Blanc came from. Um, our general manager and I were sitting down and just spitballing ideas, and and she had thrown out Shenon Blanc, and I was like, well, why can't we put bubbles in it? Let's try it. And you know, just looking at things through a different lens, it's very helpful as a winemaker. I think almost every winemaker wants to have that freedom to be this creative. It's just when you aren't sure if there's a market for it, that's a big risk, right? It's a big risk to put in all that capital, all that work, and then not know if there's sales channel for it. And I think that's what's exciting about the next generation of consumers and winemakers is there's a bit more willingness to try different things.

Andrew Allison 21:33

For those that are maybe less familiar, your wines are available in retailers as large as Whole Foods nationally and Bevmo and many others, because I've personally purchased them from there. What's it like making wine at that scale? And a small mistake is gonna be a lot of capital.

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 21:50

It's very humbling. That's the number one thing I will say is to be a truly good winemaker, you have to be able to remove your ego from this. And you have to make wines that I can. Make wines that I love to drink all day long. I can make wines that I love and I would want on my table for me all day long. But if I'm the only one drinking them, it doesn't really resonate with people. So you have to take your ego out of it, number one, and you have to be humble because, like you said, if there's one mistake, it can come back and hit you pretty quickly. So I think the the biggest thing is to have a sense of calm when you're making these wines. I've always said this, and this is a quote that I've always lived by. And it it kind of happened by chance one day. My buddy and I were talking in the cellar back when we were, you know, cellar rats. And I looked at him and I just said, dude, you know what? Just hit me. And he goes, What? And I said, You can tell when a winemaker's nervous. You can tell in their wines. And he said, You know what? You're right. And I said, dude, nervous winemakers make nervous wines. And you feel it. The wine feels a little disjointed. It feels a little forced, right? It feels not there. So having that sense of calm and that sense of direction of understanding where you want to go, understanding how to get there, and putting a plan in place. You have to be a master planner, number one, and just be able to kind of take your own spin out of it. Because when you do that, you realize how little control over this you actually have. And that's where I think the difference between good winemakers and great winemakers is great winemakers know how to live with controlled chaos, you know, without trying to over-control things.

Andrew Allison 23:20

Kyle, thank you so much for jumping on today. Where can folks come and visit you and try your wines in person? Or where can they maybe buy a bottle that you made?

Kyle Altomare: Winemaker at Gloria Ferrer 23:28

Yeah. Thanks for having me, Andrew. This is always fun to talk about the industry and what's going on. All of our wines can be found on gloriaferrer.com. And you can come actually taste with us in Southern Sonoma, the Carnerous region, right on Arnold Drive. So right north of the raceway in Sonoma, California.

Andrew Allison 23:43

I will put all the links in the show notes. So thank you so much for jumping on. It's always fun to catch up with you. You're one of the largest sparkling wine producers that I know. And always great to have a chance to taste your wines each year. So, Kyle, thank you so very much, and we'll catch up with you next time. Cheers. Thanks, Sander. Thanks for listening to Wine Country Business. For more insights and video clips, make sure to follow the show on Instagram at WineCountry. If you found value in today's conversation, please follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your pods. A brief thank you to our publisher, Wine Country Media, and a special thanks to Napa Valley Car Club for letting us record at the Barn, their members only club in downtown Napa. I'm Andrew Allison, thanks for joining me, and we'll see you in the next episode.