WINE LOVERS MAKE A FINE PAIRING
They had a lot in common, but it was a chance encounter that set the stage
They grew up on opposite sides of the globe and had much in common, but Serge Troxel, 36, and Olya Sadovskaya, 27, would never have known it — or married — had it not been for an exchange program, a root canal and Walgreens.
In 2007, Troxel went to his dentist on Sutter Street, and afterward to a pharmacy nearby. There, he saw a young woman shopping. It was Sadovskaya, a history major at a Russian university who was studying English in the United States. He was struck by her smile and her bright eyes, but his mouth was numbed by surgery and he couldn’t smile back. “I tried to talk, and drooled,” he said. “I ran out the door.”
In 2010, he spotted her again at Whole Foods, but was too shy to say hello. A few months later, at a party for a friend of a friend, he spotted a familiar face across the room. It was Sadovskaya, who was a friend of that friend, too.
Sadovskaya, who stayed in San Francisco after the exchange program ended, was waitressing and studying at the Wine & Spirit Education Trust. She played cool to his face, but she remembered him from Walgreens and Whole Foods.
Troxel, who worked as an import distributor for a wine company, made small talk about the Gewürtztraminer she was drinking that night. The next night, over drinks in North Beach, they learned they’d both studied ancient history in college, liked classical music and loved Hemingway.
“The fireworks were going off,” Troxel said. “Everything was going perfect.”
Over the next two years, they went on dates, one of them an evening summer picnic on Nob Hill. On a bench outside Grace Cathedral, Troxel set up Champagne, crystal flutes and pastries to nibble while looking at the stars. “I absolutely knew she was the one,” he said, “but personally and professionally it wasn’t the right time to settle down.”
Both wanted careers in wine. To focus on their studies, they put the dating on hold. He earned a master’s degree in wine business from Sonoma State University and she earned a wine professional credential at the Culinary Institute of America. He went to South Africa to work the harvest at Delaire-Graff Estate. She landed the wine director’s job at Mezes Kitchen & Wine Bar in the Marina.
But when he returned to San Francisco last fall, he had new resolve. He invited her to dinner at his apartment, and she arrived to find the lights low, classical music playing, red roses strewn about, and, on a table, three bottles of wine wrapped in foil. In a blind tasting, she correctly guessed one was a private label Napa Cabernet they’d sipped on an early date. When he removed the foil to confirm her hunch about the second, a 1988 Chateau Margaux, she knew this was no ordinary dinner. Troxel had been saving it for a special moment, much like a character from Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.”
“The next thing I remember he went on his knee,” she said, “and presented a ring and asked in Russian if I’d marry him.”