While the physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes’s claim that Boston is the “Hub of the Universe” is in dispute (outside Boston), the capital of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is indeed the cosmopolitan and cultural hub of the region of New England on the eastern seaboard, a region with an affinity for wine. That said, “Boston is still emerging as a wine market,” says Boston-area Michael Meagher MS. “We’re not by any means on the level of San Francisco or New York, and part of that is just the parochial nature of Boston.” Or perhaps it’s because only recently has there been an emergence of dedicated wine professionals.
“When I first started in Boston there were only four or five restaurants that had sommeliers,” says Brahm Callahan, Boston’s other master sommelier. “When I sat for the first certified exam there were only five certified sommeliers in the whole city at that point. Now there are hundreds.”
Certified or not, an exhaustive list of these growing ranks is, of course, impossible, but here are some of the Boston area’s more notable sommeliers.
Brahm Callahan
Brahm Callahan is wine director for the Himmel Hospitality Group of Grill 23 & Bar, Post 390 and Harvest, in Cambridge’s Harvard Square. In Callahan’s 10 years with the group, he’s run all three programmes individually and now collectively. Having passed the Court of Master Sommeliers’ highest exam last year, Callahan is one of two master sommeliers in the state of Massachusetts.
Grill 23, Himmel’s flagship restaurant, has one of Boston’s more significant wine programmes, with 2,200 bins represented on the list and 15 certified sommeliers (most are servers). Callahan specialises in older California Cabernet and old Bordeaux. “We’re trying to be the definitive list for old California Cabernet,” says Callahan. “We’ve got stuff from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, and we’ve become the leader in that category. There are a couple of wine lists in the country that do it well, such as Press in Napa, but we want to be in that top tier.”
Callahan describes Post 390’s list (which Jason Percival — winner of last year’s Advanced Sommelier exam’s Rudd Scholarship — helps oversee) of 300 bins as always in motion. “We flip what we have quite often,” says Callahan. “We buy a case of this and a case of that, it comes and it goes. It’s a little bit more esoteric; some cool niche stuff.”
Harvest’s wine programme strikes a balance between the two, and, says Callahan, “It’s built around offering a lot of value, especially at the top end. We use our ability to garner allocations and bring some great top bottlings in and sell them at what would be almost below retail.”
Callahan also runs twice-weekly certification training for the group’s staff to prepare them for the upcoming Court of Master Sommeliers exams in July; unsurprising, given his reputation for professionalism. “There are few people I’ve ever met who simply work as hard as Brahm does,” says Todd Lipman of Bistro du Midi. “His wine programme at Grill 23 is extensive, moderately complete — if you could ever consider a wine programme complete — and the amount of thought and planning that has gone into that programme is something that ought to receive more acclaim.”
Sarah Marshall
Ana Sortun’s award-winning, Eastern Mediterranean-themed Oleana in Cambridge boasts a renowned wine programme (and much-sought-after seats on their patio), now under Sarah Marshall’s guidance. “The wine programme has developed into this edited, curated list that’s on the small-to-medium side,” says Marshall, “but overall, although it’s become a little bit more esoteric and varietal-focused, the programme has [been] maintained to support artisans, family, community, history, culture and farming.”
Marshall strives to work with organic and biodynamic wines, but only if those efforts are a function of traditional winemaking. “I’m not interested in natural wines that exist just to be natural,” she explains. “If it doesn’t taste like a place or varietal, then it doesn’t necessarily have a home on my list.” And finding a home on her list is not all that easy to begin with due to space constraints. “There’s so much good-quality wine out there, so you have to set parameters to narrow it down,” she says. “That’s one of the hardest parts of our job. I’m only working with one Beaujolais producer [Yohan Lardy Fleurie Le Vivier], and one Valpolicella [Corte Sant’Alda Ca’ Fiui]. You have to pick and choose.”
Todd Lipman
In 2015, Bistro du Midi’s head sommelier Todd Lipman was named Best Sommelier in Boston by The Improper Bostonian, and his restaurant received the Best of Award of Excellence from Wine Spectator. After having run some of the top wine programmes around the city, Lipman’s programme at the Provençal-themed Bistro du Midi (which enjoys a view over the beautiful Boston Public Garden) is relatively large for Boston, with a list nearing 700 selections, 75% of which is French, with heavy representation from Burgundy, Bordeaux and the Rhône.
On managing such a significant programme and interacting with Bistro du Midi’s guests, Lipman is quite pragmatic: “At this point, people are more familiar with what a sommelier does,” he says. “They’re not assuming that everybody wears a tastevin around their neck, and that everybody is out to get them. I can attest that because of the size of our restaurant and the size of our programme, not everybody walks through the door looking to be sold something. A lot of people simply want a beverage, and I’m happy to facilitate that for them. It doesn’t always have to require a long, complicated discussion about soil type and elevation — though I’m very happy to do that as well.”
Cat Silirie
Cat Silirie is executive wine director and wine buyer for restaurateur Barbara Lynch’s BL Gruppo of seven unique Boston dining and drinking establishments. She placed an emphasis on wine education and service 18 years ago when they first opened No. 9 Park, just steps from the Massachusetts State House. “I had a motto then that ten sommeliers would be better than one,” says Silirie. “We trained everybody in the restaurant to be able to talk about wine, including the managers, hosts, chefs and cooks. Many people didn’t think it would be possible, but we did it.”
At the time of writing, commencement ceremonies and celebrations are happening all across Boston, Cambridge and beyond, and Silirie is working closely with her staff to make sure these special celebrations are capped off with a memorable dining experience. Her staff of “hospitalitarians” are ready. For a table representing three generations of a family, a server recommends Domaine Cheveau Pouilly-Fuissé Les Trois Terroirs, and it’s a huge hit. “It’s the most elegant, natural, medium-bodied Chardonnay with the elegance of Burgundy; it’s not overly expensive or overly complicated,” says Silirie, on how it suited the balance of tension, expectation and excitement of a graduation. “I thought that was such an insightful recommendation for Joe [the server] to come up with.”
Michael Meagher
Michael Meagher, founder of the Boston Sommelier Society and the area’s only other master sommelier, now runs the consulting company Sommelier on Demand, which helps restaurants and other beverage programmes develop wine lists and train staff. “It’s like training wheels for a restaurant,” says Meagher. “Once they’re profitable they can make the business decision to bring on a wine professional full time, or to evolve differently. I’m not running the day-to-day wine programme for one specific restaurant; instead I’m working with wineries and distributers, conducting tastings for sommeliers, back vintages, private events — it’s dynamic and exciting.”
Meagher says the Boston Sommelier Society began as a study group for the Court of Master Sommeliers’ certifications, but what started as a small group has grown much larger, and has served as a nucleus to Boston’s sommelier scene — a scene that is growing. “I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next three or four years we’ll have three more master sommeliers and two or three more masters of wine that we could add to our ranks,” says Meagher.
Lauren C Daddona
Lauren C Daddona is wine director at L’Espalier in Boston’s Back Bay, managing one of the city’s more highly acclaimed wine programmes. An advanced sommelier, Daddona spent the first six years of her wine career at the renowned Lower Falls Wine Co. in Newton, west of Boston, and last year was named a “rising star” sommelier by culinary magazine StarChefs. “We curate an extensive by-the-bottle programme that is rooted in France while offering benchmark examples from the rest of the world,” says Daddona, of her programme at L’Espalier. “Classicists and adventurers will each be happy to select from our list of established names, alongside up-and-coming regions and producers. We hope that more courageous diners will indulge in our Journey tasting menu with wine pairings so we may share the best of both alongside the top menu from our kitchen.”
Felisha Foster and Liz Mann
Spoke, the creation of Felisha Foster, is the place to go for wine in Somerville’s Davis Square neighbourhood. Despite tight quarters, the wine bar is known for chef John daSilva’s excellent food and a passionately chosen list of wines. “The wine list is small, diverse and precise,” says Liz Mann, assistant wine buyer. “It isn't about, ‘well this fits here, and this caters to this kind of palate, or this is the price point we need.’ The wines we choose are the wines we fall in love with; the wines that stop us in our tracks.”
The team at Spoke have created a wine setting that is enthusiastic and unpretentious, and it’s resulted in a strong community of local customer and citywide industry support. “The bottle list and our offerings by the glass are eclectic and adventurous,” says Mann, “but that doesn't mean it's unapproachable. We make wine approachable.”
