We just published our October issue, featuring the Best New Sommeliers of 2013. Eight sommeliers, all with fewer than four years managing wine lists, earned the most votes from more than 20,000 of their peers.
Jordan Salcito of Momofuku is our cover somm. She earned some of the most enthusiastic high-fives, as did Grant Reynolds a former Frasca sommelier who recently moved to NYC to work at Robert Bohr’s new restaurant, Charlie Bird.
When Reynolds left Frasca, Bobby Stuckey, MS, hired Carlin Karr, whose talent on the floor also earned her plenty of votes from her fellow somms. Karr moved from San Francisco, where two more sommeliers took top honors: Chad Zeigler of RN74, a BNS factory on par with Frasca, and Josh Thomas of Prospect.
Not far from Frasca, there’s another aspiring-somm magnet: The Little Nell in Aspen, where Carlton McCoy, Jr., got a lot of enthusiastic shout-outs from colleagues—and no surprise: In the short time he’s been working, he’s also earned his Master Sommelier credentials.
Las Vegas, with its plethora of high-end restaurants, also tends to attract top talent, and the name those desert sommeliers brought up this year is Will Costello, a pilot-turned-sommelier who manages the wine program for the entire Mandarin Oriental.
Andrey Ivanov, who grew up in eastern Siberia, thought about moving from his adopted home of St. Louis to work in a more sommelier-centric city, but chose to stay, earning accolades from his colleagues across the US for the wine lists he’s created at two of the city’s top new restaurants, Elaia and Olio.
We profile all eight of our Best New Sommeliers on our website at wineandspiritsmagazine.com, and feature them in the October issue, on newsstands nationally September 10th.
This is a W&S web exclusive feature.
Joshua Greene is the editor and publisher of Wine & Spirits magazine.
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