André Hueston Mack: ‘In 2025 the biggest challenge of being a somm is having a job’

In an exclusive interview with db, celebrated somm and Maison Noir Wines winemaker André Hueston Mack reveals what really happened to his Brooklyn wine bar, & Sons, after it seemingly dropped off the face of the earth in 2023. While he won’t completely rule out a relaunch, Mack admits ‘I lost myself in it’.

“In 2025, the biggest challenge of being a sommelier is having a job,” André Hueston Mack tells the drinks business. With restaurant closures in America hitting a 7-year low in 2025, there are, simply, fewer jobs to go around.

And when it comes to operating struggles, Mack gets it. Back in 2020, he launched his first-ever restaurant and wine bar, & Sons Ham Bar, in Brooklyn. Heralded by RESY as a “buzzy neighbourhood magnet bursting with regulars”, with Mack proudly pledging to be “striving for more terroir, more pride in our roots, more distinction”, its future looked bright. But in 2023, the venue vanished from social media. With no official closure information online, Reddit users questioned the radio silence: “I really miss & Sons,” one user lamented. “Come back André!” was another’s desperate plea.

So what happened? When it opened, the establishment was touted as a family affair, named after Mack’s four sons, with his wife, Phoebe Damrosch, co-running the show. “So here’s the hard part,” Mack tells db. “I lost myself in it. I was trying to keep it all together, then when I took a step back I realised I hadn’t shown up for my family in the way I wanted to.

“It made me realise I was fighting too hard for something that was going to cost me something else. My entire life had been about having fun, and I’d gotten to a place where, if I wasn’t having fun, I didn’t do it anymore. I had lost sight of that.” Adding to that were post-pandemic pressures. “It was hard to be a restaurant owner in Covid – it was a hard time being a human being. Interactions with people, how people acted, that was hard.”

NYC’s evolving wine scene

He admits it’s “very sad” but equally “not a tender thing”: “I don’t have a lot of pride hung up on it. It became one of those things where it was a big challenge and it wasn’t worth that challenge.” Will & Sons ever return? “We’ll see.”

Anything’s possible in a wine scene as dynamic and fast-moving as New York’s. And Mack has his finger (and nose and palate) on the pulse: he arrived in the city two decades ago, when big lists, baller bottles and classics – Burgundies, Bordeauxes and Champagnes – were a huge flex. “But New York has started pushing for more perspective,” he says, “you’re seeing lists with more growers, more regions”.

Drinking wine has gone from ‘show and tell’ to ‘come and share’. “Now, it’s not about somebody buying a USD $2,000 bottle. There’s a more democratic approach. It’s not really a dinner without wine on the table,” Mack explains.

Nonetheless, exclusivity is still a draw, with punters buying less but trading up. “There’s an idea that people aren’t drinking heavy wines, but the big reds are slowly starting to creep back in,” Mack tells me. He notes a love for the local area, with Finger Lake wines taking off, as well as chilled reds and orange wines. Brushed off by some as a ‘hipster trend’, Mack insists they’re not a fad: “They’re better made, more precise, and they’ve become part of the conversation in New York.”

How Mack caught the wine bug

Looking forward, he thinks lists will tighten, becoming “less encyclopedic, more dinner party energy”. Once-obscure regions, like Canada and Santorini, are piquing curiosity. “The best thing about working as a somm in 2025 is the idea of going to a place, learning about a wine, being passionate, then coming back to your restaurant and telling those people’s story as it relates to the wine.”

His zeal may have you thinking Mack was born with a glass of Pinot Noir in hand. But it was only after ditching a prestigious career with Citicorp Investment Services that he even considered wine. Having quit with no exit plan, he’d pass time “hanging out on the couch” in Texas, watching re-runs of American sitcom Frasier. It was the pompous brothers’ camaraderie around wine that “encouraged me to walk into a wine shop for the first time in my life.”

Next, he returned to his old haunt, the Red Lobster, where he’d previously been a pot-washer, before heading to The Palm, San Antonio. “That’s where the flame started,” he pinpoints. “Every waking moment I was studying wine, understanding wine, serving it. Wine is the first place I felt curiosity mattered more than credentials. It’s history, it’s geography, it’s culture – all bottled up, and it connects people who might otherwise never sit at the same table.”

Now, that restaurant’s just a footnote in the wine expert’s gold-varnished career: For years, he worked at Thomas Keller’s famed French Laundry in Napa Valley before moving to the east coast to run the beverage programme at Per Se – one of New York’s most prestigious tasting menu ventures. 

‘To be a master is to be a student’

He’s also penned a culinary colouring book (with plans to create 19 more), authored a memoir, 99 Bottles: A Black Sheep’s Guide to Wines, and wracked up armfuls of awards. In 2003, the New Jersey native became the first African American to win the Best Young Sommelier in America competition, and he took home The Network Journal’s 40-Under-Forty Achievement Award in 2007. Wine’s also taken him to some crazy places: “A James Bond supervillain yacht in the middle of nowhere… Australia, Africa, South America, Europe… beautiful places, like Bordeaux, that are in plain sight.”

Does he ever pinch himself? “All the time”. But then he adds, “I don’t do a lot of reflection. That’s what keeps me moving forward. But I do take a few seconds to say, ‘Wow, this is far from being in foster care.’” 

“It’s a strange feeling,” he goes on. “Would I say I’m successful? Yeah, but I don’t think of it that way. Everything’s a stepping stone. While you stay humble, you climb the rungs of the ladder. I’m still hungry for more.” When I ask what’s next, his answer isn’t business ventures or bar openings, but a hallmark of humility: “Community is where I’m pushing – to educate the masses, to let people know that wine is for everybody.”

Still, Mack doesn’t consider himself an expert. He lives by the Taoist adage, ‘to be a master, forever be a student’. There’s always more to learn when it comes to wine. “I don’t think at any point have I felt like I’ve mastered the craft,” he confesses.

The philosophy of Maison Noir Wines

In 2007, for instance, he left Per Se to launch his own winery, Maison Noir Wines, in Oregon, in a bid to “learn about wine through making it rather than curating lists”. A fresh entrepreneur, he honed his design skills to create wine-labels and street-wear wine-themed t-shirts, to fashion a brand around reasonably-priced wines that paired with food. 

It was tough: vineyard challenges, the pain of scaling a company, interacting with people and ample time on the road, made for a steep learning curve. But Mack thinks the winery’s stayed true to its roots in creating wines for “everyday luxury”.

“It’s fun showing people that wine should be enjoyed on many different occasions, from going to a BBQ and drinking wine out of a mason jar, to being at a Michelin three-star dinner that lasts seven hours with different glassware for each course,” he enthuses.

This sums up Mack’s philosophy: wine as a way to learn, live and connect; wine that’s for the people. 

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