Tahiirah Habibi Is Building a Better Wine World on Her Own Terms

Tahiirah Habibi has an incurable case of imposter syndrome. She still doesn’t understand why Ruinart wanted her in their Blanc de Blancs 2010 documentary or why hotel chain Marriott sought her for their Amazon Prime mini documentary. “It’s so profound to me to be invited to these things because I’m not a person that plays by the rules or is trying to be this perfect cookie-cutter image of anything,” she says. “And so it’s not lost on me that they could have asked anybody to do this documentary. They could have got somebody in a suit.”

But Habibi is exceptional. In 2017, she founded The Hue Society to champion inclusivity in the wine industry and was named an Imbibe 75 Person to Watch in 2020. Since then, she’s continued to rack up accolades, such as VinePair’s 2022 Advocate of the Year and Wine Enthusiast’s 2023 Social Visionary of the Year. She’s on the board of the James Beard Awards, was the first Black woman on the cover of Wine Enthusiast, co-founded The Roots Fund to provide financial support and resources to BIPOC in the wine industry, and hosted the inaugural Golden Vine Awards aka “the Oscars of wine” in 2021.

Despite all her accomplishments in the wine world, Habibi doesn’t have one thing that wine professionals covet: the Master Sommelier pin. When she was a neophyte sommelier she aspired to be the first Black female Master Sommelier. But that changed in 2011.

During a Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas (CMSA) exam, Habibi was told to only address the high-level somms as “master.” Even though she passed her test, “something in me died that day, and something was reborn as well,” she says in her 2020 Instagram video recounting the traumatizing experience. That policy, in addition to the microaggressions and cultural bias, motivated her to cut ties with the organization. “It’s what made me realize I’d have to consistently devalue myself in order to be accepted there,” she says.

After sharing her experience in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, her video went viral, shaking up the wine industry. Master somms Richard Betts, Nathanial Ready, and Brian McClintic, who starred in the 2012 movie Somm that glorified the CMSA testing process, resigned from the organization. Then CMSA changed its policy: The complete “master sommelier” title is used to address the pinned somms. The organization also created a diversity committee and funded a BIPOC scholarship.

“I’ve just been trying to be intentional about doing things that bring me joy, because that is a part of the revolution and making sure that I’m okay and fulfilled and doing things that are important to me.”

Even though the BLM movement of 2020 inspired many industries to make more inclusive changes, Habibi says, “There wasn’t an actual change.” Some forward-facing alterations were made at the bottom level, while those on top, the decision-makers, remained. “And that is how you know where the progress was made,” she says, “and it wasn’t a lot.” While before the glass ceiling in the wine industry was foggy, now it’s a little cleaner and you can see the other side. “And so now they gaslight you into, ‘Oh yes, you can get here.’ But it just doesn’t happen,” she explains.

Habibi’s work to make the wine industry more inclusive continues. She opened international chapters of The Hue Society in South Africa and Italy but is also looking at Australia, France, England, and Nigeria. However, she’s finding difficulty in getting people and resources for these efforts. “It’s hard to get people to help you and sometimes it’s really hard to get people to buy into it,” she says. Plus there’s the matter of her being one person. “If I was Jay-Z or I was Beyonce, that would count like ‘Oh one person but I can do this,’” she says. But taking care of the different chapters, partnerships, events, and the scholarship programs is a lot. “I’m not a hero,” Habibi says. “I’m just a person who wants to make sure that I fully believe in freedom and autonomy and the redistribution of power.”

In terms of looking ahead, she’s excited about July’s The Hue Society Wine + Culture Fest, which moved from Atlanta to Washington, D.C., this year. “I feel like D.C. is more accessible for what I’m trying to do and the demographic that I service,” she explains, “because it’s a lot easier for people to hop on a train …. I wanted to make it easier for those people to get there especially since we’re in a recession and everything is so expensive. And I just wanted to continue to dismantle the barriers of access.”

Furthering those accessibility efforts, this summer, Habibi is launching a multi-functional app called Wine-Ish that focuses on cultural inclusivity with multicultural descriptions and cultural pairings. And she’s started teaching wine courses to BIPOC executives, “give them simple wine glasses, make them feel comfortable again, like an affirming environment.”

Despite her very full plate, Habibi keeps dreaming up ways to build a better wine world and is only limited by time. “I’ve just been trying to be intentional about doing things that bring me joy, because that is a part of the revolution and making sure that I’m okay and fulfilled and doing things that are important to me.”