Sparkling wine is one of humanity's most enduring creative rituals. In this episode of Full Expression, host Dan Imhoff travels to California's Anderson Valley to sit down with Arnaud Weyrich, the French-born winemaker behind the méthode champenoise wines at Roederer Estate.
Arnaud brings a rare, ground-up perspective: trained in agronomy, viticulture, and enology in France, and shaped by three decades of harvests on both sides of the Atlantic. He walks us through the great complexity of sparkling wine—early picking for acidity, blending with intention rather than recipes, second fermentation in bottle, disgorgement, dosage—and why every decision is part science and part intuition.
The conversation opens into bigger questions about creativity and adaptation: how climate change is reshaping vineyards and harvest timing, why note-taking and institutional memory matter as much as lab data, and how emerging tools like automation and AI can assist decision-making without replacing the winemaker's palate.
We also explore wine as a cultural artifact—rooted in place, tradition, and shared pleasure—and why sparkling wine, with all its labor and precision, has become the sound and symbol of celebration itself.
It's a conversation about what it means to keep creating something joyful in a rapidly shifting world.
