Tahiirah Habibi

The Path

Sommelier practice moved through formal education and Miami service before becoming platform work. Tahiirah Habibi trained at University of Pennsylvania, then worked as sommelier at St. Regis Bal Harbour in Miami and as sommelier at Michael's Genuine in Miami. The current body of work joins wine service with cultural infrastructure. Tahiirah is founder of The Hue Society since 2017, founder of Wine & Culture Fest, co-founder of The Roots Fund since 2020, sommelier, and a cultural leader, host, and curator.

The Work Today

Inclusive wine work, in Habibi’s hands, is not a slogan attached to a list after service is built. Since 2017, The Hue Society has operated from the premise that audience, language, marketing, and room design are part of the trade. Habibi has led that work while working as an Atlanta-based sommelier, with a focus on connecting the wine world with African-American audiences. Event-making functions here as a sommelier tool: gathering people, producers, and context in the same frame. Black Wine Experience, an annual event in New Orleans, Louisiana, helps connect the wine world with an African-American audience. Wine & Culture Fest, held in Atlanta, Georgia, celebrates Black- and brown-owned brands, placing producers and audiences in shared view rather than treating inclusion as an afterthought. The operating brief is stated plainly in Habibi’s own words: “I felt like it was time to focus on building up the confidence of people of color, and making sure they’re included in the conversations, and in the marketing.” For a working sommelier, that means confidence is part of service; inclusion is part of programming; conversation and visibility are part of how wine culture is built.

In Their Words “I felt like it was time to focus on building up the confidence of people of color, and making sure they’re included in the conversations, and in the marketing.”

Acclaim

Recognition for this work sits in the bridge between sommelier knowledge and audience access. Habibi is known for making wine more inclusive and for connecting the wine world with African-American audiences; the trade value is in moving expertise beyond private fluency and into formats where more people can enter the conversation. The platform record is concrete: The Hue Society, Black Wine Experience, and Wine & Culture Fest. One began in 2017, another gathers annually in New Orleans, and another celebrates Black- and brown-owned brands in Atlanta. Together, they mark a practice shaped not only by service, but by the question of who service reaches.