Imbibe 75 Person to Watch: Lauren Hoey

“I love accessible wine lists,” says Lauren Hoey, wine director at New York’s Jupiter, about one of her main considerations when assembling a wine program. “I, myself, am driven by value when I go out to buy, and I want to be able to offer that to everyone else.” New York’s Midtown may not be the first place that you’d think “value,” but at the Rockefeller Center–area follow-up to King, the beloved SoHo restaurant from chefs Jess Shadbolt and Clare de Boer, and beverage director Annie Shi, Hoey delivers on just that: an expansive, free-wheeling tour through Italy, France, and a smattering of California that mixes modern classics with up-and-comers, at a range of reasonable price points.

Before this stint, the Los Angeles native rapidly climbed the ladder through some of New York’s top wine destinations in her nine years in the industry, including Pearl & Ash, Pasquale Jones, and NoMad. She modestly credits pandemic-related turnover for creating openings along the way—but that belies her steady hand at fluently wrangling a mix of bottles that would appeal to wine nerds and newbies alike. The list at Jupiter weighs in at a hefty (for this day and age) 700 bottles.

Hoey singles out bottles from Âmevive in Santa Barbara, Mee Godard from Beaujolais, and Domaine de L’Horizon in the Rousillon as current personal favorites. “Their entry-level red and white, ‘L’Esprit de l’Horizon,’ offer great value, and their flagship bottlings are my go-to wines for special occasions,” she says of the latter.

With the breadth of wine on the list comes the responsibility of making sure her colleagues are equally empowered to talk about their favorite wines, and she places a big emphasis on once-weekly staff trainings. “We want to be able to encourage confidence in our servers and the whole team,” she says. “I think it just makes wine service really fun and accessible.”

Click here to read more about some of 2024’s other Imbibe 75 People and Places to Watch.