Feb. 6, 2015 3:10 p.m. ET
WINE IMPORTER
Eric Solomon
lives in Charlotte, N.C. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that Mr. Solomon owns a house in Charlotte, since he spends over two-thirds of his time on the road, traveling by plane or train or car. The landscape varies—from large cities to small villages—as does the setting: restaurants, bars, hotel lobbies, vineyards and wine cellars. They’re all places where Mr. Solomon, founder of European Cellars, has located some of the world’s top winemaking talent, and where he still searches for more.
Driven by curiosity, passion and a competitive spirit, Mr. Solomon is among an elite cadre of Americans who have made it their life’s work to locate and nurture producers from places near and far whose wines will not only win high scores from the critics but serve as a benchmark for a region and a reference point for oenophiles all over the world. And of course, in addition to the personal satisfaction of bringing a great wine to the market, there is good money to be made.
Although there are many American-based wine importers today, when Mr. Solomon founded his company, in 1990, the field was a good deal less crowded. But there were a few early pioneers who particularly inspired him, including Berkeley, Calif.-based Kermit Lynch, who first rose to fame in the ’80s by discovering such great producers from France as Domaine Tempier and Domaine François Raveneau, and the late Filippo di Belardino, who in the 1970s introduced terrific Italian producers such as Livio Felluga and Mastroberardino to Americans with his company, Mediterranean Imports.
But not many importers were paying attention to the places that Mr. Solomon had begun to explore, such as Spain and the southern Rhône, nor were there many wines of note being made there. Today, of the 100 producers in Mr. Solomon’s portfolio, a quarter are from the southern Rhône, and over half are from Spain. And despite increased competition, he estimates he’s one of the top three or four importers of wines from the southern Rhône as well as one of the largest boutique importers of Spanish wines in the U.S.
This is why I chose to spend five hectic days traveling through Spain with Mr. Solomon and his portfolio manager for that country,
Daniel Gonzalez,
on one of their quarterly wine-scouting trips.
Sometimes Mr. Solomon goes scouting after receiving a tip from another producer, sometimes he has received a promising sample in the mail. But an in-person visit is always the first step in the transition of a producer from an interesting possibility to a full-fledged winemaking star—an evolution Mr. Solomon has brought about many times in his career.
A few of his past discoveries include famed Rhône-region Châteauneuf-du-Pape producers Domaine de Marcoux and Domaine de la Janasse. When Mr. Solomon first brought their wines into the States in the late ’80s, few wine drinkers cared about Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and most oenophiles considered them rustic country wines, no better than Côtes du Rhône. But Mr. Solomon was able to get his wines in front of influential sommeliers and wine critics, such as
Robert M. Parker, Jr.
, and today these two domaines are among the most sought-after in the now-famous region—with the best Châteauneuf-du-Papes selling for well over $100 a bottle. Mr. Parker, an early champion of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, said in a phone call that there were perhaps 12 good producers in the region in the late 1980s, and now there are at least 100 great domaines.
Mr. Solomon accomplished as much for Albariño, the white grape from the Rías Baixas region in Galicia that every wine drinker today seems to love. When Mr. Solomon began importing one of the best Albariño estates, Pazo de Señoráns, in 1991, the grape was almost completely unknown. Since then, the importing of Albariño has increased exponentially. According to Wines from Spain, a trade organization, more than 3.5 million bottles were exported to the U.S. in 2013, compared with just under 90,000 in 1995.
ENLARGE
Mr. Solomon is also credited with helping discover the Priorat region of Spain and one of its superstar wineries, Clos Erasmus. The wines from that estate so impressed him that he not only imported them to the U.S. (where they gained instant cult status) he later married their creator,
Daphne Glorian.
Ms. Glorian had sent samples of her wines to Mr. Solomon soon after he founded his company, just as many wine producers do today. Mr. Solomon estimates he receives at least 800 wines annually in this fashion.
My scouting trip with Mr. Solomon and Mr. Gonzalez began at seven o’clock in the morning, when it was still very dark. We were heading north from Madrid to Sierra de Gredos, a little-known subregion in the mountains, within the Madrid D.O. Home to some of the oldest and highest-altitude Garnacha vineyards in Spain, Sierra de Gredos is where two young producers,
Daniel Jiménez-Landi
and
Fernando García,
are making remarkable old-vine Garnacha wines under the Comando G label, which Mr. Solomon tasted late last year. As we drove, he described it as “one of the most exciting new projects in Spain today.”
Even though he already has many old-vine Garnachas in his portfolio, Mr. Solomon found the Comando G wines so refined, they tasted more like Pinot Noir than Châteauneuf-du-Pape, he said. (Châteauneuf-du-Pape is sometimes made entirely from the Garnacha grape, called “Grenache” in France.) In fact, they were unlike any Garnacha he’d ever tasted. Not only are the vines very old (80 to 90 years old), they were grown on granite soil, rarely the case with Garnacha.
We met Mr. Jiménez-Landi and Mr. García at one of their vineyards, where they were fertilizing the vines with sheep manure packed onto the backs of two sturdy draft horses. (All Comando G vineyards are worked by hand or horse. The parcels are tiny and the terrain is rough.) The Sierra de Gredos region is only an hour and a half from Madrid but so remote that most people—including Spanish wine drinkers—have never heard of it, said Mr. Solomon, who described the sparse, rocky topography as “New Zealand meets Mexico meets Colorado.”
The wines I tasted were equally worthy of an extended descriptor. (Burgundy meets Rhône meets high-altitude Spain?) Polished and savory, richly textured yet lithe, they were translucent like Pinot but rich and aromatic like Garnacha. Their black-and-white labels looked Burgundian, too, reminiscent of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. We tasted the wines in bottle and barrel. Mr. Solomon wants to see wines in as pure a state as possible—particularly important if a wine with good fruit is masked in part by excess oak.
When I noted the similarity of the Comando G label to that of the great Burgundy domaine, Mr. Solomon acknowledged the importance of a good design. For example, the original Comando G labels—playful cartoons on green and blue backgrounds—didn’t fit the seriousness of the wines, so Mr. Solomon asked the partners to change their label, something that he has had to do with many imports. (Spanish winemakers tend to be more amenable to making changes than the French, he noted. They also tend toward more playful designs.) “Half the time we love the wine and hate the packaging,” he confided, although he would take “a mediocre package and a great wine any day.”
The Comando G wines will arrive in the States in a few months. How does Mr. Solomon plan to market them? There is so little wine—a few thousand bottles—it is a matter of getting them to the “right 10 people,” said Mr. Solomon. Those 10 people—the “anchor zealots,” in Mr. Solomon’s parlance—are the most influential sommeliers, wine directors, critics and a few retailers. A favorable mention or a place on a top wine list is the best advertising of all.
‘Mr. Solomon looks for wines that are not only well-made and delicious but true to place and type.’
He would most likely launch them in the four top markets for a new wine: New York, Boston, San Francisco and Chicago. In many ways Boston is more important than New York, Mr. Solomon said. Why is that? New York isn’t as open as Boston, where the professionals are well educated and more willing to experiment. “New Yorkers think they’ve seen it all before—even if they haven’t,” he said with a laugh.
When we reached our hotel that evening, there were more wines to taste. Mr. Gonzalez had received a dozen or so bottles of unsolicited samples in his office in Madrid from producers hoping to secure representation. The American market is important to producers not only in monetary terms but also prestige. If Mr. Solomon and Mr. Gonzalez found something promising, they would schedule a visit to the winery in question to taste more wines.
We sampled the bottles in a room just off the hotel lobby. Though Mr. Solomon does a lot of tasting in lobbies, he said he rarely discovers a great wine through such a random sampling. Still, he found that the overall quality of unsolicited wines from Spain was much higher than it was a decade ago. (Alas, we didn’t find a single wine with potential that night.)
For the next day, Mr. Solomon had scheduled visits with promising young producers in the even more-remote regions of Ribera del Duero and Ribeira Sacra—several hours’ drive north and west. In Ribera del Duero,
Jorge Monzón,
who once worked at Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and comes from a distinguished grape-growing family, was now making tiny amounts of wine under his own Dominio del Aguila label, including several Tempranillos and a Clarete, a rose-tinted red (“Don’t call it rosé,” Mr. Solomon cautioned) that was a traditional blend of ancient varieties, red and white.
The Ribeira Sacra producers, Fedellos do Couto (“the brats of Couto”) were four jolly friends—one was a former astrophysicist—who decided to make wine together. They too were focused on producing tiny amounts of native varieties, such as Bastardo and Mencía, from very small plots in some of the most dizzyingly steep terraced vineyards I’ve ever seen. The men were friends of Daniel Jiménez-Landi, who had recommended Mr. Solomon check out their wines.
Both wineries were exactly the sort Mr. Solomon is always looking to find, turning out wines that are not only well-made and delicious but true to a place and type, created from old vines of native-only varieties (as opposed to “international” varieties grown all over the world, like Syrah and Cabernet). They have to be wines with no sign of manipulation, including excess or obvious oak. “Place over process,” is the company motto, although “indigenous over international” could be added, too.
The wines must also be tastefully labeled and competitively priced in their categories. And they have to stand out from their peers; Mr. Solomon always tastes his new prospects alongside all the already-imported wines of that category or region. This is particularly important when it comes to selling the wines; his salespeople will have to know all of the wines imported from Ribera del Duero and Ribeira Sacra, not just those from their own portfolio.
In the next few days we met several more producers and tasted many more wines—unsolicited and otherwise—and covered many more miles. (Mr. Solomon and Mr. Gonzalez estimate they drive 10,000 miles a year together, Mr. Solomon in the passenger seat.)
We also tasted and re-tasted the wines we had collected along the way (there was much clinking of the bottles in the trunk as we drove along). This was another important step, said Mr. Solomon, because it showed how well a wine held together over time. Wines that showed well on the first day but fell apart on the second or third day were likely to collapse in the rigors of overseas shipping or, for that matter, sitting on a store shelf.
And time is perhaps the most important factor of all when it comes to whether or not a wine will be a star. It isn’t enough just to launch a wine and have it get a good score or attract attention, said Mr. Solomon. It has to remain relevant and desirable for years to come. “It has to be cherished for two or three or five or 10 years,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s just a moment.”
ENLARGE
2012 Domaine de la Janasse Châteauneuf-du-Pape Cuvée Chaupin $82
This Châteauneuf-du-Pape domaine, one of Eric Solomon’s greatest finds, makes a wide range of wines—from tiny-production special cuvées to good-value Côtes du Rhônes. The Cuvée Chaupin is one of Domaine de la Janasse’s best, a 100% Grenache cuvée.
2013 Evodia Old-Vine Garnacha $9
Mr. Solomon not only imports Garnacha, he makes it. This is the second old-vine Garnacha wine that he, winemaker Jean-Marc Lafage and Yolanda Díaz at Bodegas San Alejandro have created. (Their first, Las Rocas, was so successful, E.J. Gallo Winery bought it.) Evodia is lush, ripe, delicious and a bargain.
2013 Pazo de Señoráns Albariño $20
When Mr. Solomon imported the wines from this Albariño estate in northwestern Spain, in 1991, few consumers had heard of the white grape. This wine has all the characteristics of a terrific Albariño: bright and lively, with a firm mineral thread.
2010 Clos Erasmus Priorat $170
Proprietor Daphne Glorian is not only one of the pioneers of the Priorat region of Spain, making one of its most sought-after, tiny-production old-vine Garnacha wines. She is also Eric Solomon’s wife. Clos Erasmus has been awarded a 100-point score from critics and is a benchmark wine of the region.
2011 Bodegas Hacienda Monasterio Ribera del Duero $28
Collectors of cult Spanish wines pay over $800 a bottle for Pingus, the Ribera del Duero red created by winemaker Peter Sisseck. What they may not know is Mr. Sisseck has been the consulting winemaker for Hacienda Monasterio since 1990—the first year Mr. Solomon imported it. This supple, modern-meets-traditional wine is a “baby Pingus” for less than 5% of the price.
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Write to Lettie Teague at lettie.teague@wsj.com
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