Kyle Altomare didn’t set out to become a winemaker. He was on track to be a teacher when he fell into the wine industry and never looked back. Now, at Gloria Ferrer, Kyle blends his passion for dissecting flavor with meticulous sparkling wine production, managing everything from wines aging in tirage for over 20 years to wines released with each new vintage.
Sparkling wine blending is a completely different discipline than blending still wines. You’re working with base wines that are intentionally unbalanced, feedback loops that can stretch a decade or longer, and a secondary fermentation that’s going to change everything about what the wine tastes like today. Kyle sat down with Lauren Heindel to walk through how he approaches it all: grading base wines, using oak, navigating wildly different vintages, and putting AI tools to work in the cellar during harvest.
In this episode, we cover:
How InnoVint’s AI tools changed the way Kyle’s team handles 150+ fermentations during harvest
Why sparkling wine blending is about texture first and flavor second
How Gloria Ferrer grades 85+ base wine components using a double-blind system
Kyle’s approach to oak in sparkling wine (hint: if you can taste it, you’ve gone too far)
The difference between blending for vintage expression and blending for house consistency
How AI tools help manage sparkling wine production during harvest
During peak harvest, Gloria Ferrer runs 150-180 active fermentations at a time, each requiring precise monitoring and individual decisions. Kyle explains that AI tools are most valuable here because they eliminate the time spent generating data, so the team can focus on analyzing and acting on it instead.
Before InnoVint’s AI features, Kyle’s lab team spent large amounts of time getting brix and temperature numbers into the system by hand. With InnoVint’s AI image import, even Kyle’s handwriting (self-described as the worst in the winery) gets picked up accurately. Voice-to-text work orders let him dictate instructions while walking through the cellar tasting ferments, rather than stopping his train of thought to go upstairs and type.
“My team isn’t coming to me anymore just handing me a brix and temp sheet saying, here it is. They’re saying, Kyle, you need to go check tank four, this curve doesn’t make any sense. Do you want to make any adjustments? That’s how you’re making better wine.” – Kyle
Kyle also uses InnoVint’s AI custom reporting to pull historical pick-date data by block. He has a degree in history and loves looking back at patterns, but sifting through 40 years of vineyard records used to take forever. Now he can pull average and median pick dates for any block in seconds while standing in the field.
The shift Kyle describes is bigger than just efficiency. Instead of generating data, people are auditing data and flagging anomalies. The conversations in the cellar are different now, and Kyle says his whole team has taken a step function up in terms of knowledge.
AI in winemaking is never going to replace qualified team members, but it will make your team infinitely more effective. The real value isn’t speed, it’s that your team gets to spend their time on analysis and decision-making instead of data entry.
How sparkling wine blending differs from still wine
Sparkling wine blending is primarily a textural exercise, not an aromatic one. Kyle Altomare, winemaker at Gloria Ferrer, explains that because base wines go through a secondary fermentation in the bottle, fruit character and aromatics will shift significantly. Weight on the palate, length of finish, and acid purity are more predictive of final blend quality than how a base wine smells or tastes on its own.
Kyle puts it simply: with still wine, bottling is the finish line. With sparkling, bottling is really just the starting point. A wine might sit in tirage for 15 months or 20 years, depending on the style, and that aging time has major implications for how you build the blend.
You have to start at the end and then work back to the beginning. You make sparkling wine in your head far before you make it in the cellar.
Kyle , Winemaker
Gloria Ferrer
He compares it to cooking. What’s the reason a restaurant’s pan sauce tastes better than the one you make at home? The chef used 17 sticks of butter and didn’t flinch. Sparkling winemakers are doing something similar: building a foundation of mouthfeel and then layering everything else on top. Kyle says the sum is always greater than any of its individual parts, and that’s what drew him to sparkling wine in the first place.
Kyle describes sparkling wine as “the intentional balancing of unbalanced things.” If you’re working with base wines, think of each one as a point on a scale. One wine might pull too far forward with acid, another might have a hole in the mid-palate. Your job is to find the percentages where they create something neither could do alone.
How to grade and evaluate sparkling base wines
The top three things to look for when grading sparkling base wines are weight, length of finish, and purity of acidity. Kyle says weight is the number one qualifier: does the wine feel like olive oil on your palate, or water? Aromatic intensity and complexity matter, but they’re less predictive because secondary fermentation will shift the entire flavor matrix.
At Gloria Ferrer, Kyle keeps every vineyard block separate through fermentation, which means the team sits down with 80-90 individual components at blending time. To bring some objectivity to a very subjective process, they taste everything double blind. Even Kyle doesn’t know where the wines fall in the lineup.
Everybody tastes differently. You and I can sit down and taste the same base wine and I’ll say it’s amazing, and you’re like, I really don’t like it. Are we tasting the same wine? So we had to put an objective lens on something that is very subjective.
Kyle , Winemaker
Gloria Ferrer
The grading isn’t just about scoring quality. It’s about filtering the pool before blending even begins. Kyle compares it to a carpenter’s toolbox: you wouldn’t bring a pipe wrench to a woodworking project. When you have 80-90 components, you only want the right tools on the table.
Kyle is also big on blending as a team sport. Everyone at Gloria Ferrer participates in blending sessions, and he actively encourages disagreement. His reasoning: if he’s the only person who wants to drink the wine, he hasn’t really made a good one.
Kyle recommends grading base wines on texture first, not aromatics. The temptation with still wine experience is to lean into aromatic intensity, but with sparkling, those aromatics will change through secondary fermentation. Texture is the more reliable predictor.
How oak is used in sparkling wine production
Oak in sparkling wine serves a very different purpose than in still wine. Kyle explains that the goal is to add framing, specifically a bit of fleshy texture in the mid-palate, without any noticeable aromatic or flavor impact. Because sparkling base wines are so fragile and integration time is so short, heavy-handed oak would overwhelm everything.
When Kyle arrived at Gloria Ferrer, the entire sparkling program was no oak, no malolactic fermentation, every wine was made the same way. He introduced oak, starting at just 1% of total production in 100% neutral barrels. He proved the concept first, then expanded.
What stands out about Kyle’s approach is how he works with his coopers. He doesn’t tell them what barrels to build. He shows them the wines, describes what he’s trying to achieve, and lets the cooper recommend forests, toasts, and construction. As he puts it, if you put him in a cooperage, the barrels probably wouldn’t turn out very well. He respects the craft enough to let the experts lead.
When we’re blending wines that have oak, I’ll ask people, ‘How do you feel about the oak signature on this wine?’ And if they say, ‘I didn’t know there was any oak,’ then we’ve done our job.
Kyle , Winemaker
Gloria Ferrer
Kyle runs oak trials every year and refines his approach each vintage. If you’re introducing oak into a sparkling program, start small (1% of total production in neutral barrels) and prove the concept before expanding. Let your Coopers guide the barrel selection since they know their craft the best.
Blending for vintage expression versus house style consistency
Vintage-driven blending and consistency-driven blending are two different skill sets, and Kyle says most sparkling programs need both. Vintage cuvées like Gloria Ferrer’s Carneros Cuvée (their tête de cuvée) are designed to showcase place and time. Non-vintage marketplace wines need to taste the same year after year, regardless of what happened in the vineyard.
For non-vintage wines, Kyle says the challenge is discipline. There might be a more expressive wine on the table that you’re drawn to, but the question is always: is that what we’re trying to do?
Kyle always defines his blending goal before sitting down at the table. For vintage cuvées, let the vintage lead. For consistency wines, keep the goal fixed and adjust your component percentages to hit it, even if that means ignoring the most exciting wine on the table.
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Frequently Asked Questions about Sparkling Wine Blending
What’s the most important thing to evaluate when blending sparkling wine? +
Texture and weight on the palate, not aromatics or fruit. Because sparkling base wines go through a secondary fermentation in the bottle, the flavor and aroma profile will shift. Palate weight, finish length, and acid purity are the most reliable indicators of how a base wine will perform in the final blend.
Can you use oak in sparkling wine? +
Yes, but the approach is very different from still wine. Oak in sparkling wine is about adding structure and mid-palate texture at very low percentages, not flavor or aromatic impact. At Gloria Ferrer, Kyle Altomare started with 1% of total production in neutral oak and expanded from there, always testing to make sure the oak isn’t detectable in the finished blend.
How is vintage sparkling wine blending different from non-vintage? +
Vintage cuvées are designed to express a specific place and year, so winemakers have more freedom to let the vintage character drive blend decisions. Non-vintage wines need to taste consistent year over year regardless of growing conditions, which requires a more disciplined, goal-driven approach at the blending table.
How does AI help winemakers during harvest? +
AI tools reduce the time spent on data entry and report generation, so winemaking teams can focus on analysis and decision-making. At Gloria Ferrer, InnoVint’s AI image import, voice-to-text work orders, and custom reporting helped Kyle Altomare’s team manage 150+ simultaneous fermentations more effectively during harvest.