Endless Crush on Sparkling Wine - #1
Kathleen Inman Tending Wine Barrels
Kathleen Inman, Owner and Winemaker, talks about how two continents, two degrees, two careers and a series of positive omens led her to sparkling wine.
Why Kathleen?
You might say she has an endless crush on sparkling wine. She made her first Rose, Endless Crush, as an impromptu anniversary gift for her husband. At the time, she already knew she wanted to make a sparkling version. She launched Inman Family Wines in 2002 and has been making sparkling wines since 2009.
From Art History to Accounting to Winemaking
Vicky
Your first exposure to the wine business was a summer job at a winery in Napa. Did you know then that you wanted to be in the wine business?
Kathleen
No! That summer job showed me that wine making was very much manual labor, cleaning things, moving heavy things around and drinking beer and wasn't something I wanted to do. But it was the most important turning point in my whole life because I met my future husband on my first day.
Vicky
Love at first sight?
Kathleen
No. It wasn’t for me, maybe for him! When he returned home, he wrote to the winery asking about me and we began writing letters. He was British and after a year of being “pen pals” I moved to England to continue my education and we eventually married.
Vicky
Although your bachelor’s degree was in art history, you got an MBA in England and worked as an accountant and then moved to executive search. Somehow you ended up coming back to the U.S. and becoming a winemaker, the role you didn’t think you would ever want to do. How did that happen?
Kathleen Inman in Her Russian River Valley Vineyard
Kathleen
It started when we came to California for a family holiday. My husband’s mother had planted a vineyard, and my husband and I had this crazy talk where he said, “We should give up our careers, move here and you could grow grapes and make wine.” I told him for that to happen we needed someone with more money than sense to buy our house. The day we got back to the U.K. we got a call from an agent asking if we’d ever consider selling our house. That was a sign!
After 16 years in the U.K., we sold our house, moved to Sonoma County, bought a property in the Russian River and planted a vineyard. Initially I didn’t want to make wine given what I learned in my first job, but I was taking a class at U.C. Davis on wine and thought, “maybe I could make wine.” My first wine was a Pinot Gris and people said it was one of the best they’d ever had.
The Road to My Endless Crush Sparkling Wine
Vicky
There were a lot of good omens that encouraged you to make wine. How did you get into sparkling wine?
Kathleen
I’d been making Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir for a couple of years. In 2004 I was in the throes of harvest and kept forgetting to get a present for my husband for our fast-approaching anniversary. I got up at 2:00am to harvest grapes and my husband threw on the lights and presented me with a beautiful diamond. I thought, “oh no, this is the day, and I don’t have anything for him.” I said, “I know I don’t have a present, but today I’m going to make a special wine for you.”
Vicky
Did you know what you were going to make when you said it?
Kathleen
Not at that minute but I had been wanting to make a rosé from some of my pinot and I was also sure it would make an excellent sparkling wine because of its high acid. It was when I got to the vineyard to start picking that I decided to make a rosé. I made just a small amount and pressed it in a manual press.
My husband went to get us tacos and it has now become the tradition that the amount of time the grapes stay in the press is the time it takes me to eat two tacos. [The time the juice is in contact with the skins affects the depth of color of the rosé; Kathleen’s rose is essentially ‘two taco pale pink’].
The rosé was really delicious and in 2007 I started learning about making sparkling wine. My favorite has always been Krug [Champagne Krug] so I studied how they made Champagne. I also talked to my friend Penny [Penny Gadd-Coster], my sparkling mentor who had just moved to the sparkling custom crush house called Rack and Riddle. In 2009 I made my first sparkling wine, a rosé also called Endless Crush.
A Whole Meal of Best Pairings with Sparkling Wine
Vicky
I love that name! We talked about how you came to make sparkling wine. Let’s talk about enjoying it. What is the best pairing you’ve ever had with a sparkling wine?
Kathleen
I had a whole meal of bests. I got to go to a Krug Champagne dinner in LA for my birthday one year. There were three wines with every course and there were nine courses.
“When we evacuated during the fires, the Krug came with us.”
Everything was so delicious, but one thing was exceptional. It was a perfectly seared scallop placed on a cauliflower puree, and it went beautifully with one of the Champagnes. We were the poor people at the table, but we managed to buy a few bottles. When we had the fires and had to evacuate, the Krug always came with us!
All images courtesy of Inman Family Wines
Check out all my conversations with Kathleen
