Wow. Who knew! I have never heard of that. Please tell us more.

They used to put peaches in the wine and the wine jug used to just sit on the table. And the kids, we were able to mix half red wine and half coke. That my friend was my first introduction to wine.

I am really trying to picture this.

It's like a Jersey Sangria. I should make that exact recipe again. Ha! I don’t know that I would still feel the same way about it.

 Any other wine memories you would like to reflect on? Maybe one that didn’t include peaches and coke?

I had that “aha” moment when I was working at the Boston Harbor Hotel. Be warned, this is a bit longwinded.

I was going to Boston University. My first two years were in the College of Arts and Sciences, where I was an International Relations major. I thought I was going to be James Bond. Well, I quickly realized that I wasn't going to be James Bond. I had a class called “Economic Policy of Southeast Asia.” I didn't know enough about the economic policies of the United States, let alone to be worried or learning about, you know, all these other countries that I've never even been to.

I fell in the hospitality program by accident. I had worked in hospitality in restaurants in college and when I went to make a switch of my major come junior year, I went to the counselor and she goes, what do you like to do? And I said, you know, I throw a hell of a party, and I love showing people a good time. That's when I learned BU had a hospitality school.

I sat in on a couple classes over the next week and I fell in absolute love with it. At that time, I was working for Chef Daniel Bruce, who I still keep in contact with. He was the head chef at the Boston Harbor Hotel. He did the whole Boston Harbor Wine Fest. He had a fine dining restaurant called Meritage at the Boston Harbor Hotel.

I started to truly pick up an interest in all things F&B and especially beverage. I can still recite some of the wines by the glass that were poured, and this is 20 years ago.

Ha! I totally get that. What happened next?

I was recruited by Marriott when I was leaving school in my senior year. The School of Hospitality at BU had a lot of great companies come in and you can interview and sign up and figure out what track you wanted to go on. I was all set to fly out to Burbank, California, and go through the Marriott Sales and Training program and all that. It was the most attractive offer that I got from BU, but my heart wasn’t really in it.

Simultaneously, a relative of mine who was also in food and beverage let me know that Bobby Flay was tiring and they were looking for a Maître d’ at Mesa Grill, which was his flagship restaurant in Manhattan at the time. I had already signed on with Marriott, so I had that as a fallback, but I flew to New York the day after graduation. I drove home, put my suit on the following day and went to this interview, and I got them to take a chance on me. Crazy, right?

Well, you do look good in a suit. Such a great story. A dream come true.

Yes, It's not every day you walk into a celebrity chef restaurant, and you get an opportunity to start fresh out of hospitality school. It was a lot less than Marriott had offered me to enter their Training and Development Program, but I just knew I wanted to be in restaurants. I did not want to be in hotels.

My passion was for F&B in the restaurant scene, over the hotel scene. And this is where my passion for wine really grew. I studied at the American Sommelier Association under Mr. Andrew Bell, who I still keep in touch with today. I did my level one with ASA and my level two which proved to be a lot more studying.

That must have been pretty intense.

Yeah. I was working a hundred-hour week at Mesa and then carving out time to study too. Level two was a much deeper focus on wine which I absolutely loved.  I did the better part of five years with Bobby Flay but I realized I had kind of hit the ceiling there and started to investigate other options for my future.

What happened next?

I took a month to figure things out. I had a couple of different offers and different directions I was going to go in and the CFO of Mohegan's son, Gary Crowder at the time, called me and said, “you need to call Todd English. They need you.”

I knew of Todd. I had opened several restaurants for Bobby and had kind of traveled all over for him and that's where I met Todd's team including Jeff Steelman, the current HMSHost VP of Culinary. Long story short, I was hired on and I kind of ran the food hall at The Plaza Hotel and wound up working for Todd for three and a half years. I was his Vice President of Operations & Development with Jeff as my counterpart.

Jeff was all things back of house and I was all things front of house. Todd had restaurants with HMSHost and this is really where I started to learn about HMSHost including the airport, aviation and the hated word; concessions.