Saanj Winery Wants to Make Wine More Accessible for All

by Jas Keimig

It all started on a first date.

In 2015, now-married couple Kye Freeman-Chaudhry and Shahron Chaudhry sat down in a wine-tasting room in Woodinville. "I wanted to do something serious to show her that I'm looking for something serious," Shahron remembered of the evening. As the two sniffed and sipped on wine, they simultaneously fell in love with each other and wine, from learning about the farming of grapes to the fermentation process. But as they looked around the room, Kye and Shahron noticed three things.

"One, there was not a lot of like younger folk out tasting wine. Second, there was not a lot of Brown and Black diversity within the wine-tasting rooms," Shahron said. His family is from Punjab, India, while Kye's family is Black and Laotian. "And third, there was, for me, a sense of intimidation, because I remember this person was pouring wine and saying, 'You're going to be tasting currants and spice notes.' In my mind, I'm like, what the hell is a currant? And spice notes — I'm thinking of my mom's food, and I wasn't getting anything like that."

He continued: "So at that time, I went over to Kye — who's my wife now — and I told her, 'Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we had our own winery to celebrate all the different types of cultures that we all bring to the table?'"

Now, the Burien-based couple has launched Saanj Winery, an urban winery dedicated to crafting an accessible and inclusive array of wines that appeal to a diverse spectrum of people. Cognizant of the whiteness of the wine industry, Saanj — which loosely translates to "togetherness" in Punjabi — focuses on specific wine pairings, taste notes, and flavors that speak to cuisines and cultures not normally associated with wine. Its initial launch includes a fruit-forward riesling, a floral ros, and a crisp chardonnay.

"We want flavors that are easy to pick up that any customer that purchases our wine can be able to vibe with," said Shahron.

Since their lightbulb moment back in 2015, Kye and Shahron have spent the past two years building up their urban winery. They work with local vineyard operators around the Lake Chelan area in the Columbia Valley — one of the best wine-producing regions in the world — to make their wines, combining grapes to create their desired taste profile.

The winery orients their flavors to pair well with food outside the traditional French and Italian cuisines, accommodating vegetarian diets as well as South Asian and Black cuisine flavors. (Think: What wine pairs well with greens and cornbread, or chickpeas and flatbread?) In this first drop, the label designs feature nods to Shahron's Punjabi heritage, and each wine has its own curated playlist of R&B and Punjabi music that Saanj encourages customers to put on while they're sipping.

"We really want to be able to use wine as a medium to talk about ourselves, talk about our experience, and then to resonate with our core consumers who are looking for representation within a marketplace that often ignores the New American," said Shahron.

Since its official launch last month, Saanj's riesling, ros, and chardonnay are available to order on its website. Although it doesn't have a tasting room or a physical space outside its production facility in Woodinville, the winery plans on doing pop-up events and experiences throughout fall to bring Saanj to the greater Seattle area. Its list for new products includes non-alcoholic wines — a growing market here in the United States — as well as red wines, also releasing next fall.

Learn more about Saanj Winery on its website.

This article is published under a Seattle Human Services Department grant, "Resilience Amidst Hate," in response to anti-Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander violence.

Featured Image: Saanj Winery is a new urban winery venture for co-founders (and couple!) Kye Freeman-Chaudhry and Shahron Chaudhry. (Photo courtesy of Saanj Winery.)