Christy Canterbury cares less adjectives than evidence. So when she was preparing for the Master of Wine examination, she built a tasting grid with twenty checkpoints: color, aroma, oak influence, alcohol, tannin texture, balance, length, complexity. For every wine, she wrote down only what she could prove. “It’s almost like being a detective,” she said. “What can I tell from what’s in the glass?” That mindset still shapes how she tastes wine today. Canterbury is one of roughly 400 living Masters of Wine worldwide.…

On New Year’s Eve in Midtown Manhattan, the kind of old money dining room that still believes in jackets and ceremony served a foie gras terrine with pumpernickel and the quiet confidence of an institution that has survived its own reinventions. The restaurant sits in the Seagram Building, in the footprint of what was once the Four Seasons, a temple of classical hospitality, as Andrea Robinson described it. A place that hangs a Picasso near the entry and makes you feel,…

At three-Michelin-star Eleven Madison Park in Manhattan, the wine list is as storied as the dining room. For Wine Director Adam Waddell, the job isn’t just about curating bottles; it’s about orchestrating emotion, memory and discovery — often in fewer glasses than before. Waddell, who took over the program in 2025 after joining the restaurant as associate wine director in 2023, did not set out to become a sommelier. He arrived in New York City in 2010 to study classical violin performance,…