Ralph Hersom: Wine Director
Ralph Hersom is a world-class sommelier who has risen to the very top of the food and wine worlds. His accomplishments include serving as Wine Director for Manhattan’s Le Cirque 2000 and Cellarmaster for Windows on the World. His wine lists have won numerous awards, he is highly sought after for extremely exclusive private wine dinners, he judges a number of wine competitions, and he has been featured in many radio and television shows and print articles regarding the world of wine.
Ralph’s career began in 1993 when he was inspired by an article in Wine Spectator and decided to move to San Francisco. He quit his job, sold his belongings and booked the cheapest one-way ticket he could find to San Francisco which landed him in Los Angeles! After a long bus ride, Ralph finally landed in San Francisco and obtained a room in the Tenderloin, one of the city’s roughest areas. By the third day, Ralph had hustled a job at the very successful A. Sabella's at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, becoming the youngest waiter ever hired at the restaurant.
Focused on reaching the highest levels of the wine world, Ralph went to work as a waiter for the renowned San Francisco-based 4-Star chef, Roland Passot, in his new restaurant, The Left Bank, located in Marin, across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. After Left Bank, Ralph went to work at San Francisco’s Moose’s Restaurant, where, at age 23, he was the first sommelier in the restaurant's history. Within a year, his wine list had garnered Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence – one of the first of many awards to come. In 1995 he received his basic certification from the Court of Master Sommeliers and, in 1996, won first place in the advanced course at Sterling Vineyards School of Service and Hospitality.
At the age of only 25, the bold, confident, and clearly talented Hersom pursued and won an extremely competitive national job search for one of the most important jobs in the wine world at that time - a sommelier position with Kevin Zraly at New York’s Windows on the World. In November of that same year, none other than Ruth Reichl of The New York Times wrote that “The wine list is extraordinary and very reasonably priced, and the sommelier, Ralph Hersom, is affable and enthusiastic, the sort of person who could make a wine lover out of anyone.”
Importantly for Wine that Loves, while at Windows, Ralph worked with Chef Marc Murphy to create the wine and food offerings at Cellar in the Sky, the restaurant within the restaurant that offered only a prix fixe menu where each course was painstakingly designed wine and food course. Together, chef and sommelier worked to build a menu of foods and wines that showcased what pairing could be or - for that matter - what it really should be. For people who were serious about food and wine pairing, Cellar became recognized as the place where you could experience the art of pairing taken to new heights.
In 1997, Hersom was made “an offer he couldn’t refuse” - to become Cellarmaster at one of New York’s most acclaimed restaurants, Le Cirque 2000. At the age of 26, Ralph became Le Cirque’s first sommelier, managing a 50,000-plus bottle collection. Two years later, The New York Times reported that Ralph, at the age of “only 28,” was “in charge of one of the largest and most prestigious wine lists in New York City.” Hersom was the Wine Director for Le Cirque for 7 years.
With the closing of Le Cirque in 2004, Ralph decided to take time off to think about what he wanted to do next. Shortly thereafter, Ralph met Tracy Gardner of the Amazing Wine and Food Company and the two began working together to take the everyday dinner in America to an even better place, a place closer to that of the everyday dinner in the very best eating cultures in the world, where dinner is always served with wine and where the wine served with dinner is the one that delivers the true, beautiful promise of food and wine pairing and thereby takes the pleasure of the dining experience to the next level. This was the beginning of Wine That Loves.