Past - History and Background
Inwood Estates Vineyards was founded by Dan and Rose Mary Gatlin, formerly of Dallas, Texas and now of Fredericksburg, Texas. Although there are over 500 wineries in the State of Texas, Inwood occupies a very special and unique place as the industry's very highest quality producer with an almost 20-year history of consistently turning out the State's highest priced wines, ranging up to $285 per bottle.
Unlike most Texas wineries which were started out of a hobby by founders trained in other fields, Dan Gatlin was born into a family of Dallas beverage professionals and took over the company's wine division immediately after college. Working as a wine buyer in France and California from age 22, his exposure to the fine wine world was unparalleled, and required sophisticated knowledge to invest and manage such inventories for financial success. He received life-directing inspiration from his associations with the famous founders of Napa Valley, proprietors of great Chateaux in Bordeaux, and legendary Maisons of Burgundy.
At age 26, he became one of the first people to plant grapes in Texas. Unlike virtually all Texas startups which immediately begin to produce wine regardless of its quality, Dan conducted intensive research for over 20 years in the vineyards and with the chemistry to perfect the product before releasing his first wine. Nothing like this was ever done before, nor has been done since. The result was Texas' most acclaimed and highest priced wine ever made, garnering over 100 fine dining placements on wine lists in only 6 months, in restaurants which had never listed a single Texas wine.
Also significantly, he launched the category of Tempranillo in Texas, working together with Neal Newsom of Plains, Texas. It has been said that in the years following Inwood's initial media success, over a million Tempranillo vines were then planted in Texas. Although nobody can be sure, it was certainly a lot and Texas Tempranillo became a phenomenon. His subsequent work with Cabernet and all other Bordeaux varietals had cemented Inwood's place in history by 2017. Today, Inwood makes a variety of wines under five labels and at price points beginning at $49, although the average price is around $100 - $120.
Present - Inwood Estates Today
Key Personnel
Although Dan Gatlin continues to function day-to-day as the company's leader, Inwood Estates is a family operation with 2 other members in key roles. Rose Mary Gatlin, co-founder, still functions as the company's Vice-President, but more importantly performs the critical accounting and auditing tasks. This is a crucial role managing the company's revenues and payables. Putting eyes on so many transactions, she constantly scans for errors or any inconsistencies in the company data, and continuously tries to upgrade and perfect the internal systems of the organization.
Spencer Gatlin serves as the head winemaker, and in fact, has made the winery's last six vintages. He has been fine tuned under his father to execute the making of fine wines in Texas, and has turned in a series of critical successes already in his young career. Spencer has also innovated a number of new, more technological advancements to Inwood's winemaking processes, many of which have put Inwood on the leading edge of winemaking commensurate with the world's top facilities. These innovations include things like optical sorting, micro-oxidation, ion exchange, reverse osmosis, and many other advancements in wine chemistry. Learning from his father, he also has a superior working knowledge of the farming techniques needed to produce the type of fruit for premium and ultra-premium wines.
Production
Inwood wine production is a highly technical process which conforms to the highest standards fully equal to the world's finest producers. Clearly, winemaking at this price level is uncommon and demanding. Perfection is the goal at every step. The larger view of the process breaks down into two equally important categories: Farming for world-class fruit, and winemaking, the conversion of that fruit into a finished product.
On the surface, grapes appear to be much the same. Most people cannot tell much difference in the fruit visually or otherwise. But winegrapes contain over 60,000 compounds which determine everything about the flavor and aromatics of wine. Variations in the levels of these 60,000 elements create an almost infinite matrix of permutations accounting for countless wine types and styles, as well as quality and price ranges. Creating the blend of compounds desired for a specific wine is a combination of first selecting the grape genetics which produce the matrix in question, coupled with assiduous, precision farming to realize the vine's capabilities. Dan Gatlin has written extensively about this in his essays “Science and Nature: Part 3” and “Science and Nature: Part 4”. These cover grape genetics and precision farming.
While selecting the right DNA requires competence and experience, it's the farming where the process most often goes awry. The human element is often the most unpredictable, and Texas wines have suffered immensely from vines being overproduced. The more clusters a vine is allowed to produce, the more the wine quality is damaged. Conversely, less clusters per vine yields wine that is richer, denser and more concentrated.
The great wine regions of the world produce grapes between 1-3 tons per acre on average, and sometimes even less for very expensive wine. The bulk level supermarket wines produce anywhere from 8-12 tons per acre. The average Texas vineyard produces high tonnage fruit, yielding wine of very minimal quality. Vineyard yields are controlled by the architecture and design of the trellis and pruning systems. Three Universities encouraged Texas growers to invest in high yield vineyards years ago with the unfortunate result that wine quality was of the lowest commercial grade. Texas does not have a soil and climate problem; Texas has a human problem. Only a minority of vineyards in Texas produce at less than 3 tons per acre, and just a scant number produce at less than that.
Inwood does not produce any wines over 3 tons per acre and mostly averages around 1.5 tons per acre. Inwood's most expensive wines are produced at just 0.2 tons per acre. Sources for such fruit in Texas are scarce and historically, Inwood has farmed much of its own fruit for these products. More recently, the company has engaged in some unorthodox compensation arrangements for its rarest fruit allowing highly desired raw material to be custom grown for specific products. This gives Inwood more control over the farming process all during the season from budbreak to harvest, including yields and harvest intervals.
Dan Gatlin, President, Inwood Estates Vineyards, Inc.
Dan Gatlin was born and raised in Dallas, Texas to parents who were long time, and well-known, members of the beverage industry. Vernon and Virginia Gatlin entered the industry in 1936 only 3 years after Prohibition. They operated several of Texas' largest chains of beverage stores from the 1940s to the early 1980s, having acquired and sold companies in a very colorful history of both business and personal life. Vernon Gatlin is a past President of the Texas Package Stores Association as well as a past President of the National Package Stores Association. Virginia Gatlin is a past President of the Women's Auxiliary of the TPSA as well. They both passed in the 1980s.
(It is important to note that Vernon and Virginia Gatlin came to Dallas from a rural community in 1936 during the Great Depression with a total of $16. Their lives and admirable success is a tribute to their character and unparalleled work ethic rarely found today. This ethos was imprinted heavily on Dan, their first-born, as he was expected to work in the family business from an early age.)
Dan grew up in his parents business which was engaged in retail, Class “B” distribution, direct importing, warehousing, inventory management, and an enormous accounting workload given the lack of automation in those days. After college, he returned to Dallas and took over the company's wine division. It was in this role that he had the great fortune of having a front-row seat to what he now calls, “The Wonder Years of Wine in America.” This period, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, saw the explosion of the U.S. Wine market to a point where wine became over 50% of their company's sales from a paltry 10-15% in the early 1970s.
This revolution also facilitated the explosion of wineries in Napa and Northern California. Dan was part of a consortium that gave Caymus their first shelf spot outside California, as well as almost all of the now famous brands closely associated with the founders of Napa Valley. He was able to become acquaintances with most of these folks and was deeply inspired by their pioneering efforts and spirit which built an industry from the ground up.
Soon he was making buying trips to Europe as well and similarly building relationships in Bordeaux and Burgundy primarily, although other regions from time to time also. During this time, wine was unbelievably inexpensive by today's standards and access to some of the world's most famous brands and winemakers was fairly easy to come by. Dan took full advantage of the situation and was able to spend days barrel tasting with the winemaker at Petrus, following the crews working harvest at Mouton Rothschild and Beycheville, witnessing the first flash detente experiment at Chateau de Beaucastel, and countless more, too many to name. Today, as prices have skyrocketed, such access is rarely granted.
These experiences left an indelible and life-changing impression on Dan and he became determined to transition from the commercial industry segment to the production segment. As his parents began to contemplate, and then execute, their retirement plans, Dan used this opportunity to become one of the first people to plant grapes in Texas in 1981.
Working with no available data, and since no grape industry existed in Texas at the time, it took considerable years to develop formulas, protocols and a thorough understanding of what was necessary to produce premium wine in a virgin area. However, by 1997, the experimental phase was over and it was clear that premium wine was possible in Texas if the vineyards were planted and farmed correctly. During the years 1997-2000, Dan planted new vineyards in four successive years and by 2004 Inwood Estates was born.
Arguably, the most important of these plantings, and again, arguably the most important planting in the entire history of Texas grapegrowing, was the vineyard planted in year 2000 bringing the first Tempranillo vines to West Texas. Conceived and funded by Dan Gatlin, and established in collaboration with Neal Newsom, Texas' first premium wines became a reality. Hitting the market with a debut price of $40, twice the price of Texas' most expensive previous wine, critics (none of which had tasted the wines) were mortified, but the wine was placed on 100 of Texas' finest restaurants in less than 6 months and quickly sold out.
By 2014, Inwood wines were selling for as much as $200 per bottle and the critics were silenced. Not long after, Inwood wines intentionally went out of distribution and the company was able to allocate the entire production to its own dedicated following and membership at margins favorable to sustain it's program of such high quality while achieving comfortable profitability.
Today, Dan Gatlin is widely recognized as an expert in warm and hot climate grapegrowing for fine wine production. He has written extensively on the topic of terroir mythology and how it often inhibits the modern scientific application of best practices in shorter growing seasons. Dan has been the industry's number one advocate for higher quality wines by limiting yields and better vineyard management. Often he has been the lone voice in the wilderness for raising the level of wine quality and leading the Texas wine industry toward the premium wine segment instead of the bulk wine market which so many Texas vineyards are planted for. Fortunately, in recent years, a small but increasing number of Texas producers have joined him in a movement toward premiumization and away from the lower level wines advocated by the university academics and distributors. These were never the wines that consumers wanted and proved to be a poor direction for the Texas wine industry.
In addition, Dan Gatlin is widely considered to have one of the best and most experienced palates in the industry today. Having tasted wine as far back as 1825, having tasted numerous pre-phylloxera wines including first-growths, and having traded in wines from the 1950s to current professionally, there are very few people left active in the industry today with such experience and repertoire. He routinely consults for other wineries and winemakers, as well as judges in international wine competitions from time to time. Unlike people who train as sommeliers and have no knowledge of the science and chemistry of wine, highly experienced winemakers know how to identify the causes and sources of specific flavors in wine and how they are created through genetics, plant physiology and fermentation kinetics. Winemakers with Dan's experience are relatively uncommon, having worked with many of the most challenging winemaking tasks possible.
His strongest asset is his understanding of the synergistic sequence of events necessary to produce flawless wines. This process ranges from how vineyards are planted and developed, clones and genetics needed, yield loads and canopy management, harvest parameters, sorting and processing specifics, fermentation science and modern cellar techniques. Mastery of these processes and how they interact and connect in the aggregated production flow is the key to winemaking excellence.