Expanding a long standing partnership to advance site-driven, estate-focused winemaking in Paso Robles
April 22, 2026 (Paso Robles, CA) — House of Mittal, the parent collective behind LXV Wine, Meso, and Maison Mittal, has appointed Jeff Strekas as winemaker across its portfolio. Strekas, who has worked alongside founders Neeta and Kunal Mittal for the past 13 harvests as a consulting winemaker, now assumes an expanded mandate that reflects the House’s commitment to building one of the most technically rigorous and terroir-specific programs in Paso Robles.
Strekas arrived in wine through an unconventional path. A chemical engineering graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute and former senior engineer at Merck & Co., he made a deliberate pivot to the cellar, enrolling in the UC Davis Viticulture and Enology program in 2008. Early harvests at Merryvale Vineyards, Franciscan Estate, and Round Pond in Napa Valley, along with a stint at Mollydooker in Australia, preceded his move to Paso Robles in 2012.
While collaborating with House of Mittal as a consulting winemaker, Strekas concurrently spent over a decade at ONX Wines, where he advanced from associate winemaker to director of winegrowing. There, he helped build a program spanning more than 18 varieties, guided by a philosophy rooted in experimentation, site specificity, and sustainable winegrowing.
“Jeff doesn’t make wine the way most people make wine. He makes it the way an engineer solves a problem, methodically, without ego, until the answer is undeniable. Armaa.N Vineyard has been waiting for exactly that mindset. This appointment is the House making that partnership permanent,” said Kunal Mittal, co-founder of House of Mittal.
Strekas will now lead winemaking across all three expressions of the House of Mittal portfolio: LXV Wine, the small-batch, artistic heart of the House; Meso, whose Cabernet Franc was named Decanter’s Red Wine of the 2023 vintage for Paso Robles and whose 2022 vintage of Sangiovese earned a place on Wine Enthusiast’s Top 100 Wines list; and Maison Mittal, the ultra-premium Bordeaux-inspired collaboration born from the Mittals’ relationship with French winemaker Lionel Kreff at Château Le Chatelet, a Grand Cru Classé in Saint-Émilion, France.
ABOUT HOUSE OF MITTAL
House of Mittal is a Paso Robles-based wine collective focused on estate-driven, small-lot production across three labels: LXV Wine, Meso, and Maison Mittal. The portfolio emphasizes Bordeaux and Rhône varietals, with a growing estate footprint in the Willow Creek District AVA. The House’s estate vineyard, Armaa.N, comprises 13.5 acres of organically farmed vines, planted to Cabernet Sauvignon (clones 4, 6, and 337), Cabernet Franc, and Sangiovese (Brunello clones). Winemaking is centered on site expression, clonal precision, and long-term vineyard development.
The flagship LXV Wine label is a premium, Bordeaux-inspired collection sourced from distinguished vineyards, where each small-lot wine is crafted with Old World restraint and paired with a curated global spice program. Meso by LXV is the winery’s single-vineyard, site-specific line, designed to capture the depth of individual mesoclimates across the Central Coast. Maison Mittal represents the House’s most rarefied offering, a transatlantic collaboration drawing on fruit from both Paso Robles’ Willow Creek District and Bordeaux, France, available exclusively by allocation.
