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October 31, 2024
Eric Solomon: The wine talent scout who calls Charlotte home
How the six-time James Beard semifinalist became a champion of discovering exceptional wine and what’s coming next
by Jacqueline Pennington
Meeting Eric Solomon can be rather intimidating. For starters, Solomon has become a household name among those in the wine industry. He started his own wine importing business and has been recognized by Food & Wine magazine, Robert Parker, and the James Beard Foundation for his ongoing success. He has a reputation for uncovering hidden gems and having an exceptional portfolio of wines. Yet while the wine industry is sometimes viewed as exclusive or even pretentious, Solomon doesn’t embody that in the slightest. In spite of his impressive career, his kind and dynamic energy make it clear there’s nothing to be wary about.
Solomon’s first love was not wine. It was, and still is, music. It was in pursuit of his dream of being a percussionist that he stumbled into the world of wine. He was living in London, actively studying and performing music as a drummer as well as working as an understudy with the London Symphony Orchestra, when he started working at a wine bar for pocket money. It was there that he started meeting wine reps, tasting wine with the owners of the bar, and developing the skills that would carry him into his career in wine. It soon became clear that he would excel in this world.
“I was the very unpopular, first, and only non-Brit to be allowed into this very staunchly British academic thing called the Institute of Masters of Wine,” Solomon says. This globally renowned organization awards qualifications to those who pass examinations on wine — qualifications that are extremely valuable assets in the industry. He studied alongside and became friends with others who would end up famous for their work, like British wine critic Jancis Robinson.

While Solomon was thoroughly enjoying the ’70s in London, he had, after a certain period of time, overstayed his student visa. “I was invited to leave,” Solomon jokes. “I left and washed up on the shores of Manhattan… I was an American that had, unbeknownst to me at the time, this unicorn non-replicable experience with the Master of Wine program. I was barely 20 and I had already done the equivalent of four years of the MW program and I had worked harvest and traveled to different parts of France and Italy. So, when I came back, I was hired by a Fortune 100 company.” When the company expanded into fine wine, Solomon became their European wine aficionado.
“That was my bootcamp,” Solomon says. “I traveled all over the world; I was in charge of the liaison with the producers in Europe, but also, I became a self-appointed talent scout to find new producers for the portfolio of their company and I did that for almost 10 years.”
Being a “talent scout” is one of the many parallels that Solomon draws to his career and his love of music. He likens finding a new up-and-coming wine producer to finding the next Coldplay or comparing a music talent scout’s “golden ear” to his “golden nose” that identifies top notch wines before anyone else. It’s clear that music still plays a large part in the way Solomon sees the world.
Once his time in corporate America was over, he entered what he calls the defining moment of his career. He started his own company, a wine importer he named European Cellars. He built an impressive portfolio of wines primarily from France, but he eventually tasted a bottle that would pivot his focus to Spain. That wine was Clos Erasmus, by winemaker Daphne Glorian. Glorian’s wines are now viewed as some of the best in the world. She’s known for being one of the pioneers that made the region of Priorat, Spain what it is today. Solomon tasted and fell in love with Glorian’s wine in 1990 and bought her entire production, starting his journey to becoming the authority in Spanish wine that he is today. Seven years later, Solomon and Glorian were married and a year after that, in 1998, they came to visit friends in Charlotte for a weekend. By Sunday of that weekend, they had fallen in love with the city and purchased a home here.
Solomon, originally from North Carolina, was happy to be back. “It was everything I remembered,” he says. “I’d been in New York City for over 20 years. [Daphne] had lived in Paris and big cities…Even though she’s from northern Europe, grew up in Switzerland, loves the mountains, loves the snow, and loves to ski, she loves the heat and the humidity. She loves the greenery here that’s almost tropical. Charlotte made a lot of sense. The state was historic love for me and newfound love for her.”
Today, European Cellar’s office sits on the corner of West Morehead and McNinch Street in uptown. Solomon and Glorian spend about half the year traveling, whether it’s for harvest of the grapes at Clos Erasmus or Solomon visiting vineyards to grow his portfolio. As of late, he’s been visiting countries like Switzerland, Lebanon, Chile, and North Macedonia along with his usual stops in Spain and France. He’s even collaborating with others in the wine world to create bottles, like Sal da Terra, an albariño from Rias Baixas that illuminates the palate with a brininess reminiscent of the Atlantic Ocean’s influence in northern Spain. Solomon, along with several other influential names in wine, worked to create this expression of albariño by combining two different parcels from a vineyard with varying terroir and methods of aging to create this singular and well-rounded expression of a grape that isn’t often revered for its complexity.
“I represent, for the most part, family artisanal produced estates,” Solomon says about his portfolio. “And the reason I have so many producers is, first of all, I get bored quickly and I like diversity. I like stuff from 3,000-4,000 feet altitude. I like stuff that has salinity and sea breeze in the DNA from the proximity to the ocean draft.” He also deeply values the connections he builds with his producers. “The relationships I have with producers, it’s familial,” he says. “It’s, of course, business. We are a customer to them. They’re a provider for us. But we’ve been to their weddings and funerals and we’ve watched the baton, now that the company moves towards being four decades old, passed from father to son, father to daughter, mother to daughter or son — to the next generation.”
After 40 years in business, Solomon is thinking about what the next chapter looks like for him, too. “I’m going to retire when Jagger retires,” he says. “The Stones, I’ve seen every decade since I moved to London in the seventies, sometimes multiple times in a decade and they’ve never looked, sounded, and been better.” At an age when most people have already retired or are about to enter retirement, Solomon is working up a plan for the years ahead of him.
“I would like to do more philanthropy…More than just writing checks. Writing checks, we do, but Jimmy Carter was still building houses with Habitat for Humanity when he turned 80. That’s what we want to do,” he says. “And then in the wine business, I want to maybe acquire, and not in this sort of Wall Street Gordon Gekko way, but acquire companies that have great bones, DNA, and vision, but they don’t have the capital, the finances, or the business acumen. It’s very rare that a creative type, be that in fashion, music, wine, culinary arts, can excel on the creative side and also be a successful business person. It’s rare to have the two, and I’m lucky that I like both.”
With Solomon’s wide breadth of knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm for so many facets of life, it’s those of us that cross his path that are lucky. He’s mastered the world of wine, built a successful business after excelling in the corporate world, married the love of his life, remains a music aficionado, and continues to push boundaries and remain curious. His impact on Charlotte can be found in the wines across his portfolio that grace the tables and shelves in the restaurants and shops in the city that we, and Solomon, call home.