I’m going to be late. I have to meet Xander Soren for the wine tasting. Healdsburg Manorbut it turned out that my lateness was no problem at all. While waiting, Soren struck up a conversation with a couple at the bar, poured them samples of the eponymous brand’s new Chardonnay, and was happily talking about tasting notes when I walked in. It’s a perfect vignette that illustrates who Soren is and his unabashed passion for wine, which shines through no matter who he’s with, whether it’s an industry insider, a journalist, a trade contact, or a couple of local wine enthusiasts at a nearby bar. It helps that he’s an investor in the bar and that they stock his wines, but his fervent desire to share a glass of wine with just about anyone remains.
Solon’s latest, and rather unique, wine project is the second phase of his career: before that, he worked in the music industry for decades; He was a co-founder of GarageBand and worked at Apple developing key features for the iPod, iTunes and iPhone. Clearly, he’s technically proficient, but it’s his soft skills that have helped him launch a line of Burgundy-style California wines designed to pair with Japanese food, especially sushi. So far, the releases have been limited to Pinot Noir, but in the past few months he’s upped the ante for his brand by launching two Chardonnays.
“The logical question is ‘Where is your Chardonnay?’” Soren, an amateur winemaker with a long-standing love for Japan, told the Observer. “The Burgundy-influenced statement means this question comes up more than I thought, so it’s time to take a step forward.” When Solon first visited Japan about 15 years ago, he was immediately attracted to the way high-end sushi was paired with pinot noir, rather than sake, as is the case in the United States. The wine pairings were always French, though, and when he asked the chefs about California wines, they weren’t familiar with the sophisticated, cool-climate styles of wine that have recently become popular.
Believing the concept could work, Soren began experimenting with producing a California Pinot Noir specifically designed to pair with Japanese food. He worked as a hobbyist for many years before teaming up with renowned winemaker Shalini Sekhar and sourcing fruit from California vineyards, including violin and sanford and benedictproducing exquisite, professional wines since 2019. Launched in Japan in 2023, Xander Soren Wines was almost immediately adopted by major players in Tokyo, Kyoto and Ginza, earning accolades as a revered omakase restaurant and hotel mecca such as Park Hyatt Tokyo.
“That was a huge victory for me because I like Lost in Translation,” he revealed as we left his new friend at the bar and sat down at a nearby table, where he began lining up a football team’s shot glass for us to sample. “A luxury hotel like this also has a three-star Michelin omakase Sushi Sakai In Fukuoka, we all felt that Japan has truly embraced wine. “Scan brand Japanese customer list Showcasing over 100 restaurants, shops and omakases now stocked by Xander Soren; some key venues in California such as Healdsburg’s own in 2024, just one year after the brand’s launch in the US single threadfollowed suit one after another.
But the shift to pairing wine with sushi is still a relatively new phenomenon that often needs to be experienced to be appreciated. For years, diners rejected the idea entirely, arguing that the wine would conflict with the vinegar used to treat sushi rice. But the popularity of lighter-colored red wines like Pinot Noir, and a shift toward drinking these wines at cooler temperatures, has largely mitigated this disadvantage. Although conventional wisdom holds that white wine is the right choice for seafood, chef-pairing chefs and Japanese sommeliers often go in different directions.
“Japan is where I first saw Pinot Noir paired with fish,” Soren says, recalling his first visit to the country starting around 2010. “There’s something about our Olivet Lane Pinot Noir that’s perfect for pairing with tuna because the wine contains iron, so it matches the earthy flavors.” Even in the U.S., popular high-end Japanese restaurants such as Sushi Notes Located in Los Angeles, it offers a 20-course omakase paired with wine, or the acclaimed N/middleoffering a sophisticated beverage selection featuring red varieties, including Sauron wine.
But his expansion into white wine is an important milestone, not only fulfilling his ambitions in Burgundy (the storied French region famous for its production of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay) but also boosting holdouts who still don’t know how to pair red wine with sushi. This also has practical implications. For example, for some people, a dinner with only red pairings can become boring, no matter how good the wine is: “It works, but there’s still an expectation that you can easily adapt to it,” Solon says.
These factors, combined with the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work with fruit from Almarosa’s historic El Jabali vineyard, Originally planted by Richard Sanford in 1983start the plan. This spring, the brand launched a refreshing Chablis Chardonnay called informationnamed after the Japanese flower-cutting technique, El Jabali, while the more traditional Sande Chardonnaywith flavors of tropical fruits, a bit of oak and some malolactic fermentation.
Now, Solon’s Wine has a full line of products that can convince non-believers that wine is the right drink to pair with sushi. However, even he knows this doesn’t always work. “My wines pair really well with certain fish, like Olivet Lane with tuna, and Ludeon with some of the richer fish,” he says. “But some are more challenging. Oily whitebait or bluefish, mackerel and certain cuts generally don’t pair well with wine and usually work better with sake.”
Call it taste, preference or habit, but personally, even as a lover of Pinot Noir, I’d personally be more inclined to drink a glass of white crisp wine to pair with fish than a red wine. I was initially skeptical of the new line since I’m also on the fence about most Chardonnay, but Sauron’s tastes are firmly in line with where California wines are going. He has created not one, but two expressions that are perfect for pairing with food. “We sometimes joke that we want to create a traditional California Chardonnay for people who hate California Chardonnay,” he said. “They’re not big, oaky bombs. Chardonnay has to be super elegant—if it’s too buttery, that’s not my jam.”
Starting with these restrained Chardonnays (particularly Habari) provides a solid introduction to wine and sushi pairing for the first time. Consider pouring a glass of this mineral-driven white wine, with flavors of grapefruit and white flowers, and serving it with oysters, mussels or other shellfish. If you’re eating Japanese food, it’s excellent with hirame or hotate sashimi; the same goes for grilled mackerel, as the natural fats add more acidity to the wine. Xander Chardonnay is more traditional and pairs easily with miso black cod (a Japanese dish made by Nobu), conger eel (conger eel) and koneye sea bream (goldeye sea bream).
If these pairings go well and you’re in the mood to try wine and sushi, go for Olivet Lane Pinot Noirmade with fruit from the Russian River Valley and paired with some tuna. Sure, it might not suit you at first, but then, perhaps, the earthy notes start to emerge and your palate slowly develops a new affinity. For Sauron, watching a previously unbeliever fall down the rabbit hole made the whole adventure worth it.
“The best part is, now that I log on to my phone every day, people from all over the world are discovering the brand,” Soren said. “Whether it’s on Instagram or other forms of social media, they post about trying my wines with unexpected food pairings and loving it. That’s one of the reasons I do it: to meet people and share that. It’s validation, it makes me proud, but it’s also fun.”
