Solomon’s Kingdom: Wine and Wit in Rhythm

Chicago

The percussionist-turned-wine importer is banging the drum for premium red wines from Spain.

“The 2004 vintage is going to get the highest scores (from wine critics) that Spanish wines ever have,” Eric Solomon told us at the end of an entertaining tasting at Naha, one of Chicago’s “in” dining destinations.

“You will see the first 100-point wines from Spain (among the ‘04s).”

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As Solomon beams from the head of the table, the founder of the heralded European Cellars import network reminds me why the wine industry has such intense allure. Intellect, will and individual flair can carry you a long way in this exacting business.

In Solomon’s case, he morphed from a kid working in a London wine bar in the mid-1970s to importer of many of the most coveted wines on the planet, while winning acclaim and earning the right to make bold declarations.

My attention was torn during the Chicago tasting between appreciating several of the truly magnificent selections on the table – principally, a pair of 2004 100% Tempranillos from Bodegas Artadi in Rioja – and my fascination with Solomon’s dry wit and encyclopedic recitations about his French and Spanish portfolios.

Solomon was particularly concerned about maintaining a lively tasting environment. “Outward expressions of emotions are allowed!” he chided during a bit of a lull. The sommeliers and merchants in the private dining room soon responded. One argued that a delicious white wine from northern Spain’s Catalonia region was priced way too high despite its considerable merits.

It was an opening for Solomon’s wryness. “We priced it to make the ‘As Sortes’ look like a good value!”

As Sortes is the equally yummy Galician white (made from one of those grapes unknown to most of us, Godello) by Bodegas Rafael Palcios. It is listed this day at $20 less per bottle than the other Catalonian white, a 100% Xarello called Nun Vinya dels Taus (literally, Vineyard of the Moles). The latter, he says, is “Spain’s first cult white wine.”

This exchange is delivered with the confidence of an importer who was last year’s Food & Wine “best importer”, and one of the “wine personalities of the year” named by Robert Parker Jr.’s Wine Advocate.

“Where there is desperation, there has to be levity,” said Solomon, 51, who learned to adhere to that philosophy when launching Charlotte, N.C.-based European Cellars in the early 1990s with two producers on his roster. His mantra in those leaner years: “Unfiltered, unfined, unsold.”

“Unsold” was soon dropped from the tagline, but as his immersion in the European wine universe evolved Solomon clearly did not grow more somber. Levity still rules. The only enhancement I would dare suggest for Solomon’s road show is that he should pepper his oratory with rim shots. (We assume a former London Symphony Orchestra percussionist understudy could handle the assignment).

He refers to southern France’s Languedoc as “honorary Spain”, which is not only funny because it would drive a Frenchman crazy but instantly tells the less enlightened something about the region’s wine characteristics.

(Eric, center, with HinsdaleCellars.com founders Steve Woodward, left, and Sean Chaudhry)

He mentions the “polished rusticity” of a Cotes du Rhone Grenache selection by Domaine La Garrigue, a value priced red Rhone in which Solomon is a consultant, or as he framed it, in which there is “pride of ownership without the financial risk.”

After tasting 17 wines, we concluded with a 2003 Port made by a husband-wife team under the banner Wine & Soul. It is approaching cultish stature in Portugal, he says, despite its literal dog of a name, Pintas. “That’s like a Portuguese ‘Buster’,” Solomon says. European wines carrying human names, he adds, usually suggest one extreme or the other, “a tribute or a vendetta.”

To experience the bite and the bark of the ’03 Pintas in the U.S. market, expect a cultish price tag of about $68.

Happily, there will be few dogs among Spain’s 2004 reds, as forecast by Solomon in his concluding remarks in Chicago. The Artadi Pagos Viejos and its upscale relative El Pison are just two of those destined to receive very high marks, and that is not guesswork.

Solomon frequently tastes alongside Wine Advocate’s Parker, and though he would not reveal that to which he is sworn to secrecy, it is obvious Solomon believes that a 100-point rated Spanish red is in his 2004 portfolio.

“It is just a magical vintage,” he said.

– By Steve Woodward