Former Apple Executive Makes Wine That Japanese Top Sushi Chefs Praise – Forbes

A new boutique Californian wine brand is gaining accolades from top sushi chefs in Japan: Xander Soren.

It is made by Xander Soren who spent over 20 years at Apple in product development and marketing. He played a pivotal role in helping to develop digital music products like GarageBand, iTunes and iPod until he retired to focus on his wine business in 2022.

“My fascination with Japanese culture began in childhood when I became enamored with Kurosawa films and the 1980 mini-series “Shogun,” he says. He dove into Japanese art and history in college and after dozens of trips to Japan while working at Apple, he discovered that Japanese people love being innovative as much as preserving traditions.

This mindset was particularly evident at Japanese restaurants Soren visited. One day, a few years before he started making wine, a local friend took him to a sushi restaurant in Kyoto. “The sommelier used to be a sushi chef and instead of serving beer or sake, he introduced me to the idea of pairing Pinot Noir with sushi, which I never would have thought of,” says Soren.

Back home in San Francisco where he had easy access to Napa and Sonoma, some university friends of his were producing quality wine. Soren asked them to make wine with them on the side at a very tiny scale as a hobby. It was in 2012.

Making A New Style Californian Pinot Noir

After the encounter with the unconventional Japanese food and wine pairings in Kyoto and the following similar experiences, Soren’s mind was set to pursue making wine that would go well with Japanese food.

Since Japanese food is rich in seafood and seafood-based dashi stock is foundational, he could have made wine with white grapes to easily pair with oceanic flavors. But he chose to focus on the red Pinot Noir grape.

“I found a lot of restaurants in Japan where they have Burgundy wines on their beverage menu because Pinot Noir is so flexible for food pairing,” says Soren. “There is an elegance and a brightness and an acidity to Pinot Noir that allows it to cover anything from seafood, vegetables, mushroom to red meats.”

But California is not Burgundy. Isn’t it risky for him to follow the model of Burgundy?

“We have an image of big, rich California Pinot Noir in the 1990s but now, there is a growing movement of many wineries that are trying to produce more elegant Pinot Noir in California.”

So he joined the movement. First, Soren deliberately selected the vineyards for his wine. “I blind-tasted a number of vineyards and two years in a row, I picked the exact same vineyards, which were all on the central coast of California.”

These sites happened to have unique properties. The air flows from the east to the west provide ocean influence to impart subtle saline notes to the wine. “Japanese cuisine has the same oceanic flavor elements such as nori seaweed. I found that the Japanese chefs and sommeliers really responded to it,” he says.

Soren makes wine in collaboration with his winemaker Shalini Sakhar whom he got acquainted with while he was making wine at his friends’ winery. “I met other winemakers but I found a lot of soft, floral bouquet in her wines like in fine Burgundy.”

After 11 years of his wine-making endeavor, Soren finally launched his wine in Japan in 2023. His labels are already on top restaurants’ beverage menus, including at Sushi Saito and Hakkoku in Tokyo, KOKE in Kyoto and Sushi Sakai in Fukuoka. Non-Japanese spots and hotel restaurants also have chosen his wine, such as Jean Georges Tokyo, Park Hyatt Tokyo and AMAN Kyoto.

But he does not have a major sales team. How did he manage to launch his wine so successfully so fast?

“In the early days, I would go to Japan on each vacation and bring my bottles to introduce myself to chefs and sommeliers, while also collecting their feedback. I was able to understand which winemaking styles and wine regions resonated most and paired best with Japanese cuisine. Then I made gradual adjustments and improvements over time,” Soren says.

By the time of the official launch of his brand, which started in Japan before the US, Soren already had a great network of people who knew and liked his wines.

A Perfect Pairing: Japanese Food And Pinot Noir

Takatoshi Kadowaki, chef and owner of Sushi Kadowaki in Ginza, Tokyo, has Soren’s wine on his beverage menu.

He is a traditional sushi chef who does not use modern items like caviar or foie gras. But when it comes to beverage pairings, he is quite progressive.

His sushi is the Edomae (Tokyo) style, which highlights umami. To achieve the highest level of umami, he carefully ages his fish for several days. He recommends pairing it with Soren’s Pinot Noir.

“In other styles of sushi like Kizushi, which is popular in the western part of Japan, the fish is never aged and served chilled to enjoy its freshness and firm texture. In that case, white wine goes well with the fish. On the contrary, to fully enjoy the high level of umami in the aged fish, we keep it slightly warmer. Just like premium butter, you can enjoy its meltingly soft mouthfeel and increased sweetness. With that, you need a delicate red wine served at the same temperature to complete the synergy of sushi and wine,” says Kadowaki.

Soren launched his wine in the U.S. in June 2024 and the reception is already quite positive.

For example, Kyle Connaughton, chef and owner of the Michelin three-star restaurant SingleThread in Sonoma, California, carries a wide assortment of Soren’s wine on the restaurant’s honorable Wine Spectator Grand List.

Connaughton, who cooked at traditional restaurants in Japan for several years, is known for his original dishes with Japanese influence.

“At SingleThread, our focus is to feature the natural flavors of the ingredients. This is a principle and ethos that is consistent with the Japanese approach to cooking. This extends to our wine pairing philosophy as well, finding ways to support the natural flavors and the terroir of both ingredients and the wines,” he says.

“Xander has the same nature-driven mindset and he has been making incredibly food-friendly wines, especially with the nuanced flavors of Japanese cuisine.”

Connaughton pairs Soren‘s Pinot Noir with a variety of dishes, such as duck with Hakurei turnip, Komatsuna Japanese mustard spinach, Negi scallion custard and black sesame Furikake. Fish is also handsomely matched with the wine like umami-rich wild smoked salmon cured with Shio Koji.

In the U.S., Sore’s wines are available on his website.

Currently, he produces only around 400 cases a year but hopes to gradually increase the production. “I am spending a lot of time traveling and meeting new people, making friends through wine and great food.”

Sounds like Soren is fully enjoying his new life just as he was at Apple, now dealing with a very different kind of product. But his mission stays the same: offering people something unique with pleasant surprises.