Greg Harrington, MS
Greg Harrington, MS
Master Sommelier
Award winning Wine Director
Winemaker
TV and radio personality
Greg Harrington, Winemaker, Gramercy CellarsLike Haley Joel Osment, Macaulay Culkin and that kid who played Mikey in the Life cereal commercials, Greg Harrington was a star before his time.
In 1996, at age 26, he became the youngest American ever to pass the Master Sommelier exam. At the time, he was working as wine director for Emeril Lagasse’s restaurants in New Orleans and Las Vegas, where he developed a wine program that earned Wine Spectator’s Grand Award—an honor bestowed on fewer than 100 restaurants in the United States.
Avoiding the pitfalls that beset many young talents (rehab programs, bar fights, romantic liaisons with Lindsay Lohan) Harrington progressed to other major roles. From his job with Emeril, he went on to serve as wine director for the Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group, managing beverage programs for Spago in Chicago, Las Vegas, Maui and Palo Alto, and others. More recently, he ran the beverage division for B.R. Guest’s 14 restaurants, including Blue Fin and Fiamma in New York, which feature two of the city’s most extensive and celebrated wine lists.
Over the past 12 years, he has won 21 Wine Spectator Awards of Excellence, and has been a regular speaker at prestigious wine festivals across the country, including the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Kapalua Wine and Food Festival and the Telluride Wine Festival. For all his lofty pedigree, Greg remains a down-home guy. He favors dive bars over fancy tasting rooms, and, with his career change, he has fulfilled one of his greatest ambitions: he almost never has to wear a suit.
He is a graduate of the Cornell School of Hotel Administration and is a regular guest lecturer for undergraduate and graduate beverage management courses at Cornell. Greg has four times been the featured sommelier at the acclaimed James Beard House. Greg also serves on the Board of the Court of Master Sommeliers and is co-founder and board member for W2U, an annual wine trade weekend in Walla Walla.
He has also appeared as a wine expert on numerous radio and television shows, including Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Invariably, those who meet him are left with this impression: he’s a serious winemaker who doesn’t take himself too seriously.
