ERIC SOLOMON
By Kim Wright Wiley, Charlotte Taste Magazine

Charlotte’s very own Eric Solomon was recently named Food and Wine Magazine’s 2007 Top US Importer. This, people, is a Very Big Deal.

When we realized that we were born the same year, Eric Solomon’s mind went where it always does - straight to wine. “1955 was a great vintage,” he says. “Good Bordeaux, good Burgundy, a fabulous year for port….” And when I asked him where he grew up, he said “You’re making quite an assumption.” Okay, so maybe he didn’t grow up, at least not if growing up means taking a job you hate and adapting yourself to the demands of the “real world” because Eric Solomon’s vocation and avocation are one and the same. He lives, breathes, and dreams wine.

The answer to where he grew up, by the way, is Greensboro, which was a bucolic little town in the late fifties. Both of his parents were clinical psychologists and when Eric was 13 - a tumultuous time in anyone’s life, especially if the calendar year happens to be 1969 - his parents announced that a) they were getting divorced and b) the family was moving to Buffalo. “Quite a shock,” Eric says drily. “It’s like that joke from A Chorus Line where a character says ‘To commit suicide in Buffalo is redundant.’”

The Vietnam War lottery ended the year before Eric would have been eligible for the draft - another reason ’55 is a lucky vintage - and at the age of 18, Eric was invited to understudy as a drummer with the London Symphony Orchestra. He wasted no time getting himself across the pond. “I didn’t want to keep asking my parents for money,” he says, “so I got a job at a wine bar. The owners liked me and whenever the reps would come in they’d include me in the tastings. I guess they saw I had the interest and some ability so they sponsored me for Institute of Masters of Wine.”

Goodbye drums, hello vineyards. In the early 70s there were fewer than 100 Masters of Wine in England, all of them British, and they weren’t so happy to have this Yank upstart in their midst. “What makes you or breaks you in a wine program is the practical side, which is usually blind tastings,” says Eric. “We had to identify ten wines and write about them - the rumor was they were weeding out the Americans on the basis that we weren’t writing with proper English.” But Eric managed to both pass the four-year program and spend a few seasons working the French harvest along the way. By 1979 he was back in the US and possibly one of the most wine-savvy 24-year-olds in the whole country.

He was scooped up quickly by corporate giant Heublein and used his years as a sales rep in New York City to make stellar connections. “Kevin Zraly at Windows on the World was one of my first customers,” he says, “and when he comes down to Charlotte for the Wine and Food Weekend he still teases me about it. I was calling on the best restaurants in New York and also traveling back and forth to France.” Eric became Heublein’s youngest VP but clearly saw that his happiest times weren’t in the boardroom, they were in the cellars, tasting early wines before they came to market. “Being a wine importer is a bit like being a talent scout,” Eric says. “You taste a lot of forgettable wines looking for that one that really moves you. But I loved the thrill of recognizing raw talent and bringing it into the marketplace.”

Goodbye corporate life, hello entrepreneurialism. In 1989 Eric quit his job and opened European Cellars. For the first five years he imported exclusively French wines, with an emphasis on the south. “A 35-year-old man is not in a position to walk into the office of a Grand Cru burgundy producer and say ‘Hi, I’m Eric Solomon, sign me up,’” he says. “At the time Rhones such as Chateauneuf-du-Pape were still largely unknown. Now, thanks to Robert Parker and Kermit Lynch, they’re powerhouse wines, but back then nobody was paying attention to them. It was a good place to start.”

Eric almost immediately drew the journalistic attention of venerable wine writer Robert Parker, whom he calls “Bob” “He is one of the most ethical and giving people in the business,” says Eric. “When we first met I didn’t know he loved Rhone wines but I happened to send him a Chateauneuf-du-Pape that he’d never tried. He called me and said ‘Tell me about this producer, and by the way, who are you?’ Bob likes the worthy underdog and here I was a kid with no real presence in the wine world exploring uncharted territory. He became my advocate.”

The next truly pivotal moment in Eric Solomon’s life came five years later.

“What changed my life was meeting Daphne,” says Eric, referring to his wife, winemaker Daphne Glorian. “It sounds like a soap opera, but it’s true. By that time I had this little office in Chelsea where the rents were low but you had to literally step over the junkies lying on the steps every morning. If you stuck your head out the window and turned it perfectly you could get a glimpse of the Empire State Building. I was inundated with unsolicited samples from small vineyards in Europe, so many that one whole wall of my office was wine. I was feeling guilty - these people had gone to the trouble of boxing and sending these bottles overseas and I owed them some sort of response, so one spring day I sat down and started tasting.” He tried 80 wines that day but one stopped him in his tracks. It was called Clos Erasmus and because of the name, and the fact the other wines were all French, Eric assumed he was tasting a French wine. “When I looked at the label and saw it was from the Priorat region in Spain I was floored,” he says. “I had never even heard of the Priorat and, as it turns out, no one else had either.”

Daphne Glorian had sent Eric that bottle so many months earlier she’d forgotten about it. She was traveling in South America and it took days for him to catch up with her. “When I looked at the label it had such an absurdly low number that I knew she wasn’t producing much,” says Eric. “I wrote her saying ‘I’ll take every bottle you have.’” Daphne still recalls how she felt when she finally read his fax. It was her first vintage. She had never sold a bottle of wine before in her whole life. And now this guy in America wanted it all.

It was a life-altering moment for both of them - Daphne took Eric into the world of Spanish wines, Eric took Daphne into the American market. They didn’t actually meet for two years, but when they did, it was “at first sight” and an intercontinental romance began. “We had a modern relationship,” he laughs. “A new vineyard is a sieve of time and money and Daphne and I were building our businesses on different continents at the same time.”

Au revoir to France, hola to Spain. Since virtually no one was importing Spanish wines, Eric became by default an expert, but he nonetheless threw himself into a true study of Spain. Robert Parker gave the 1994 Clos Erasmus a stunning 99 rating and after five years of constant traveling, Eric and Daphne married in 1997. A country girl at heart, she hated New York and Eric too was yearning to recapture the simplicity of his youth. “We knew what we wanted,” he says. “A place where she could ride horses and I could ride cycles that was near a major airport.” They came to Charlotte for the weekend to visit friends and by Sunday they had made an offer on a house. When his international business associates say “Why Charlotte?” Eric answers “Why not Charlotte?”

European Cellars now imports 105 producers from four countries; Spain makes up 65% of the market, followed by France (30%), Portugal (5%) and Switzerland (“minute”). The sudden popularity of Spanish wines has fueled the company’s rise with Eric’s old friend Robert Parker leading the charge, and Parker’s support was undoubtedly instrumental in Eric being named Food & Wine Magazine’s 2007 Top Importer in the US. Eric has been featured in Wine Spectator and trade publications, but coverage in a large consumer magazine has the potential of lifting him to household name status.

So…after a meteoric rise that even Eric describes as “a career without foreplay” what happens next? “I have a mantra: Place Before Process,” says Eric. “I’m interested in what makes grapes from one vineyard different from a vineyard 100 kilometers away and I’m not interested in a cookie cutter approach to winemaking… There are areas of France, Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland that I haven’t yet begun to explore… Oh, and I’m a huge proponent of indigenous varietals... I don’t want a chardonnay from Spain or a Merlot from Portugal… That’s like going to Tuscany and ordering Sicilian food… I plan to build a portfolio that focuses on terroir… I really want to identify, champion, and rescue varietals that have been nearly wiped out in a quest for designer grapes… There’s a sea of stuff out there that’s been ignored, the true regional wines… Have you ever tasted a Spanish white? I predict they’ll reach the same cult status as German Rieslings...” Obviously this is not a man who intends to rest on his laurels. As long as there’s a grape undiscovered, a region ignored, or a talented winemaker laboring in obscurity, Eric Solomon will be traveling the globe in search of them.