Meet the Maker: Kim LaVere of Land + Local

Kim grew up in Los Angeles, a competitive student athlete on a tight academic schedule, eating what she calls "the standard American diet" on the go between soccer practices. "Sitting down for dinner at a table or having picnics on Sunday with the family was really out of the question for me," she remembers. Food, for a long time, felt less like nourishment and more like a restriction.

After college back East and ten years in corporate retail in New York, she found herself burnt-out. She left to figure out what it was that really made her tick and feel alive.

The first answer came at a farmer's market. "I remember having the taste of a fresh white nectarine for the first time," she says. "I really feel like that almost was the door opening to this world of how fresh food can be healing and mood lifting."

That taste led her to culinary school at New York's Natural Gourmet Institute, and Ayurveda, the ancient Indian healing system that translates literally as "the science of life." She traveled to India to study it, and started working in restaraunts around the world. When she came home to California, she enrolled in the California School of Herbal Studies, founded by the legendary herbalist Rosemary Gladstar, often referred to as the godmother of American herbalism. Somewhere along the way, the through-line became clear.

"It's always been about weaving food and medicine back together, because that's traditionally how our ancestors ate," Kim says. With the rise of Western pharmacology, she explains, "all of the perception of medicinal foods got bred out, especially in cocktails. I'm really on this mission to weave that back in, in a way that's healthy and safe and tonically dosed through every sip and bite of your day."

That ethos has family roots she's still tracing. "We're from a line of Holocaust survivors," she shares quietly. "Just having that severed connection to place has kind of persisted through the generations. I feel really passionate about reconnecting my lineage back to plants and earth. My great-grandparents were farmers and butchers in Eastern Europe." When the word reclamation comes up, she nods. "Yes. That's a perfect word."

When Kim formulated the Elderflower Mint Botanical Mixer that sits at the heart of our Raspberry Rosé Cocktail Kit, she was thinking about a season in transition, and about a much older idea of what a cocktail is for.

"The traditional origins of cocktails were a way for people to take their medicine," she explains. "It was a way to sneak bitters in to help with digestion, or with nervous system support, or sleep." Wine, she points out, traveled the same road. "Even the origins of winemaking didn't limit themselves to just fermented grapes. They'd ferment different herbs in with the wine, or make wine with elderflowers." That's the lineage Kim is working in, and it's the one our sparkling wine sits beside.

Elderflowers bloom in late spring along Sonoma's wild hedgerows, their tiny cream-white blossoms releasing a flavor that unfurls in layers of lychee and wild honey, ripening into soft pear and muscat grape, with a green herbaceous lift, like fresh hay or chamomile, that keeps the finish bright and clean. "I love this flavor. It's been woven into traditional healing and diets for centuries," she says. Well known for nervous system support, elderflower has anti-allergy, fever reducing properties.

The Elderflower Mint Botanical Mixer is made of elderflower and fresh organic spearmint, cold-macerated overnight to draw out its hydrating, cooling properties. A whisper of marshmallow leaf is added for a fattier mouthfeel ("which is also more hydrating in nature"). It has organic meyer lemon juice for acidity and gut support, and local honey, chosen for its viscosity. "It's heavy and viscous, which is great for dry days. It coats the throat. It's soothing."

Muddle it into our Brut Rosé and you have the Hugo Spritz's more contemporary and cool cousin: a drink with a sense of place, and a few benefits to boot. (You can also find our Hugo Spritz recipe here, we love it with our Ultra Brut.)

Around 85% of Land + Local's herbs and fruits, by weight, come from farms within fifty miles of Kim's production kitchen. Front Porch Farms and Medium Farms, both in Healdsburg, are anchors. Miriam at Medium grows, in Kim's words, "really cool, weird, interesting varietals." The farmers are all in her phone, and a text about a glut of mint or snap peas or turmeric is often where a new product begins.

It's a way of working we recognize. Domaine Carneros farms six ranches across the Carneros AVA, all within four miles of the Château. The Carneros, Spanish for ‘ram', spans the cool, southern ends of both Napa Valley and Sonoma county. We're the only sparkling wine producer to source Carneros grapes exclusively.

"Some of the smartest people I've ever met are local farmers here in Sonoma County," she says. "Now more than ever, it's important to vote with your dollar and support your local farms and wineries, because they are having a really hard time right now."

For those reading this far from a Sonoma farmer's market, Kim has the gentlest invitation for how to bring her philosophy to your kitchen. Start small.

"Just add a sprig of mint and lemon to your water. Make a sun tea. Grow one or two herbs at home. Mint grows like a weed. Calendula is very hard to kill." If you feel called to bring it up a notch, you can make herbal cold infusions overnight, she says, "or get really witchy and put it out on the doorstep to catch all the lunar benefits." She's smiling when she says it.

She paraphrases her teacher Rosemary Gladstar from memory: "The medicine doesn't need to be ingested in order for it to be medicine. When you hit a different level of relationship to the plant world, just knowing they're there is supportive in and of itself." Kim adds her own line: "Plants can be like your family members. You're not alone. You have support right there."

Our Raspberry Rosé Cocktail Kit is our first collaboration with Kim, and we have a feeling it won't be our last. There are more seasons ahead, more pairings to explore, and more ways her botanical craft could play alongside our sparkling wines.

In the meantime, you'll find a bottle of Kim's Land + Local Elderflower Mint Botanical Mixer tucked inside the Raspberry Rosé Cocktail Kit, ready to be muddled, shaken, and poured into something beautiful.