Ten Glasses at SingleThread: The Full Drink Pairing
I told the wine director I wanted a mix of wines and non-alcoholic pairings, which is either the most interesting or the most inconvenient request you can make at a restaurant with a 4,000-bottle cellar.
The sommelier at a three-Michelin-star restaurant in Sonoma wine country is not going to suggest something obvious. I told Chris McFall, Wine Director at SingleThread, that I wanted a mix of wines and non-alcoholic pairings across the ten courses. He made the calls.
What arrived over the next three hours moved between Champagne, German Riesling, Japanese sake, Sonoma Pinot Noir, and Sauternes on the wine side, and between house-crafted tea drinks, botanical builds, and a non-alcoholic Old Fashioned on the other. Both tracks were designed with the same intention: to extend and complicate what was already happening on the plate.
The Sommelier
Chris McFall has been Wine Director at SingleThread since September 2022. He manages a cellar of over 4,000 selections and develops the non-alcoholic program in direct collaboration with the kitchen. Both programs are his, and they show the same level of thinking. The non-alcoholic pairings at SingleThread are not an afterthought. They are a parallel version of the same experience, and on a night when I asked for a mix, that distinction mattered. For the food that arrived with each of these glasses, the full dining review covers every course.
Dom Pérignon, Champagne, France 2015
Creamy and generous, with brioche, white peach, and something a little toasty underneath. The 2015 arrived before I had touched anything on the table. The Amuse Bouche is eleven small bites of restrained, precise flavors introducing the meal. Champagne with this kind of openness does not compete with that kind of subtlety. It opens it. By the sixth bite the glass had already done its job, which is exactly what a first pairing should do.
Joh. Bapt. Schäfer, Goldloch, Grosses Gewächs, Nahe, Germany 2022
Dry Riesling from the Nahe, with ripe peach, a faint exotic note, and the kind of acidity that stays precise without going sharp. This was the pairing where the drink did the simplest and most useful thing a wine can do with fish: it cut through the slight richness of the hamachi and made the fish taste more like itself. The Grosses Gewächs didn't announce anything. It just made the Hamachi O-Tsukuri cleaner, which was enough.
Gyokuro, Genmai & Yuzu
Gyokuro is shade-grown Japanese green tea, sweeter and more umami-dense than anything most people have had in a regular tea context. Roasted brown rice added depth. Yuzu provided a bright citrus edge that cut across both. The drink sat in the sweet-savory middle, which is exactly where Dungeness crab also lives. The yuzu did what a good white wine would do: sharpened the crab's sweetness and kept everything moving forward. This was the pairing that convinced me the non-alcoholic program here is serious. It was not a consolation drink. It was the right drink for the Dungeness Crab Trio.
Spring Greens & Juniper
Herbal and clean, with the resinous bite of juniper keeping it from going too gentle. The Salanova is a delicate lettuce course, all precision and farm freshness. The pairing echoed it rather than contrasted it. Spring greens next to spring greens, in different forms. Sometimes that is the correct call, and here it let the course breathe without adding noise.
IWA 5, Assemblage 5, Junmai Daiginjo, Toyama, Japan
Richard Geoffroy spent 28 years as the creative director at Dom Pérignon before he left to make sake in Toyama, Japan. What he built with IWA 5 is structured like a Champagne: complex, assembled, designed to evolve in the glass. Assemblage 5 opened with pear, jasmine, and something lightly spiced. The palate was silky and then dry and mineral, with white pepper at the finish.
The Black Cod Fukkura-sanwas cooked in the donabe, buttery sablefish in miso and chamomile dashi. The sake's weight was right for it: substantial enough to sit alongside the richness of the fish, with enough mineral dryness that the pairing didn't go heavy. The two cleaned each other up. And the fact that a sake made by the former creative director of Dom Pérignon arrived in the same evening as a 2015 Dom Pérignon either means something or means the cellar here is very deliberately building a conversation across the meal. For what this course looked like on the plate, it's in the dining review.
Raen, Pinot Noir, Royal St. Robert, Sonoma Coast 2023
Rose petals, crushed wild berries, black tea, and something that smells like coastal fog and forest floor. Taut acidity and a finish that lingers longer than you expect from a wine this light on its feet. The vineyards sit near Bodega Bay, and you can feel that proximity in the glass.
Pinot Noir with a Snap Pea course is not the obvious move. But the wine's acidity mirrors the snap of the vegetable. The earth and forest floor in the glass connects to the soil the pea grew in, on a farm a few miles from where these grapes are harvested. The pairing worked because it was thinking about the same place from two different directions, and when you understand that, it stops feeling like an unusual choice.
Hommage au Pinot Noir
The non-alcoholic companion to the meat course, built to carry something with depth and a little darkness to sit alongside the richness of the wagyu. What it did with the Masami Wagyu was create the same relationship a red wine would: the drink cutting through the fat and giving back something clean and considered. The non-alcoholic program at SingleThread is not a lighter version of the wine experience. It is a parallel one. This glass made that clear.
Okinawa Old Fashioned
Warm, slightly bitter, structured like a drink that takes itself seriously. The Old Fashioned format built from Okinawan flavors: something in the brown sugar and botanical register, stirred down, substantial. The Takenoko Zakkokumai is a donabe rice course, earthy and deeply satisfying, with mushroom and genmaicha miso running through it. A delicate pairing would not have survived that course. This one did. It had enough body to stay alongside the rice and enough bitterness to keep things from going flat.
Chateau d'Yquem, Sauternes, Bordeaux, France 2014
Honey, apricot, dried citrus, saffron. Richness held in place by acidity that knows exactly what it is doing. A glass of Château d'Yquem tastes like the category of dessert wine being at its most honest: no apology for sweetness, no excess. The Sonoma Milk & Honey course draws from the farm's own beehives. A dish built on honey, met by a wine built from the same material. The combination did not need to be explained. It explained itself immediately.
Apple, Orange Blossom, & Saffron
Light and floral, with saffron pulling it somewhere warmer than the name alone suggests. The Wagashi arrived on the rooftop with the fire already going. Small Japanese confections made from seasonal fruit, matcha, lemon thyme, and local honey, four of them, each a different texture. The drink was calibrated not to compete. Apple for freshness. Orange blossom for a gentle sweetness. Saffron so it did not go easy.
It was a good last glass. The kind that does not try to summarize the evening, just closes it quietly and lets you sit with it. Everything that came before it, course by course, is in the full dining review.
Notes
Restaurant: SingleThread, 131 North St., Healdsburg, CA 95448
Reservations:singlethreadfarms.com (Tock; 1st of each month at 9am PST for the following month)
Wine Director: Chris McFall
Pairing tiers: $300 curated / $500 reserve / $1,500 prestige cellar; non-alcoholic pairing available at a separate rate
Related: The full SingleThread dining review is in the [dining review] [← hyperlink anchor]
Instagram: @singlethreadfarms
About the Author
Kelly Gomez is a creative director who eats well, travels far, and lives with intention. She has sat at tables that required months of planning, flown routes that cross a dozen time zones, and found herself in rooms most people never find. She is precise about what she loves and honest about what falls short.
A WSET Level 2 Wine Certified writer and Advanced Open Water Diver, Kelly covers luxury travel, hotels, fine dining, wineries, diving destinations, and the trips built around them.
Her work reaches a US-based audience of travelers between 25 and 44, with a near-even gender split and a meaningful following.
